Enough
by Black Wolf's Shadow
Summary: Alternative ending to "Profiler, Profiled." How things could have turned out had Hotch not figured it out in time; warning, it is dark. You need to see that episode to understand this. Pairing is Morgan/Reid. Complete, will load all chapters ASAP.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Finally, my first ever Criminal Minds story is finished! (Took forever despite the fact it was supposed to be a simple oneshot. Blasted rabid plot bunnies...) Please enjoy!

~Shadow

* * *

AU. I tried to stay in character as much as possible but there are some reactions and some places where I really had no reference to go on; I apologize if these characters do not fit with your conceptions of them from the show. This is slash, although nothing blatantly physical happens; those looking for lemons, look elsewere. Those looking for a more in-depth interpretation of these brilliant characters, read on. With that, you have been warned.

Everything up to this is the same as in the episode. If you haven't seen it, you're not going to understand a thing. Come back when you have.

Respective rights to all owners who are not me.

* * *

"Hey! What, did we turn him loose?!" Officer Dennison said, storming back out of the previously-occupied interrogation room.

Reid's already stooped posture sagged and he leaned back against the desk to stay on his feet as relief swept through him; at the same time, he felt his his heart drop somewhere into the vicinity of his non-standard dress code converse shoes.

He was relieved Derek was out of the Chicago PD's hands; Derek was experienced and street-smart enough that he could hide for years without being caught and buy Reid and the team enough time to clear him, which they _would_ do because there was simply no other option. It was unthinkable to Reid that they give up on him; he was surprised the possibility even crossed his mind but he knew it had occurred to the others.

But this latest action only made Derek look guilty as hell, which he had to have known before he left; everyone left in the room was now wondering 'Why run if you're innocent and truly believe you've nothing to fear?'

_Exactly!_, Reid thought as he watched Hotch's eyes tighten at the news Derek had escaped. The formidable team leader strode forward to deal with the oncoming situation, flanked by Gideon and Emily; JJ stayed back, her eyes watchful for a sign she'd be needed. Reid didn't bother to join in the arguing, he knew he didn't have the forceful personality any of the others had in spades and the team would certainly defend Morgan's honor for him. He'd be rather more of a hindrance in this situation than a help.

Instead, Reid turned his formidable brain to trying to read Derek's motives for his actions. Despite appearances, in Reid's experiences it was rare for Derek to just go off and act without a thorough evaluation of the situation; he would have had to have a reason for what he'd done, no matter how personal this case was turning out to be.

Hands tapping the air distractedly, Reid bit his lips together and considered and discarded the first, most obvious solution, which was that Derek was guilty; Reid was 98% certain that he knew the other man better than anyone else and, despite being the youngest on the team, was just as good of a profiler as any of the others. He'd have noticed something; serial unsubs simply weren't capable of hiding themselves for that long, especially in the (in Spencer's case, extremely close) vicinity of the BAU. There was always something that gave them away.

Rooting around in his bag, Reid grabbed out a notebook and a pencil; his thoughts were beginning to race and he didn't want to miss anything that might be important to consider.

Scribbling and thinking, he next he discarded the possibility that Derek was afraid of being wrongly convicted; the BAU was his friends, his protectors, his family. He'd have faith in them that they could solve this before it came to that. Even if they didn't get him off and he was convicted, did he really think they'd have left him in jail, that Reid would have?

Reid knew exactly how deep his loyalty ran; he'd lose his job, his career, his pride, everything, but he'd do it all by setting Derek free. At the very least, Derek had to know Reid would never give up on him, so he wouldn't run for that reason.

There had to be something more, something they didn't know. Hadn't Hotch said Morgan was defensive about them getting into his past? Reid underlined the word defensive; Derek was one of the most open people he knew, at least outwardly, and it was very rare for him to get defensive even with personal questions.

So what had him so bothered about the fact they were learning his past? Garcia had told them about the criminal record he technically didn't have; Reid had already known about that even before her news, he'd been the only one unsuprised when Garcia had revealed it, though he'd tried to act like he was.

So it had to be about his past, but the record wasn't it; Derek hadn't been upset when he'd told Reid about it a month or so ago.

Hotch had also said Derek had told him that he wanted to "keep something to myself." Was there something else, something he didn't even want Reid to know? It would be serious, extremely so, if that was the case, something that would make him feel insecure enough not to want to share.

So what were the things that made him insecure?

Reid considered that with the same focused intensity, the paper below the pencil turning into a complicated mess that likely only he would be able to decipher later. That was abnormal, his usual stream of consciousness thoughts were normally much more organized, almost an outline actually, but right now he was stressed almost beyond measure. Shaking off the distraction, he refocused.

What did he know about Derek? He was the consumate tough-guy; the physique, the attitude, the clothes were all designed to hide the gentleness Reid knew was just below the surface.

_So why act the part?_ Reid pondered.

_Because intimacy makes him insecure,_ another part answered. Keep people away, keep yourself safe was how Morgan thought. Look how long it had taken him to get up the courage to ask Reid out; before that, he'd been on an impressive streak of one-night flings that hadn't been exactly secret. He had not one, but four different residences, almost another way of hiding or protecting himself; no one person would see anything more than the one place and he could hide at any of the others if he needed to.

Reid stored that away for a possible place to check at a future time if he couldn't resolve this now and continued thinking.

It had taken even longer before either of them had gotten up the courage to do anything truly physical, and in the end it had been Reid that initiated that, although Derek took control shortly after, which was fine with Reid.

All of this only reinforced Reid's impression that Derek was afraid of someone getting too close. But now the hesitancy, the reluctance to take things physical stood out, a red flag about what was going on; once they'd started seeing each other, shouldn't the hesitancy have decreased rather than increased? Reid would have staked his future at the BAU that it was connected, but how?

Reid shrugged away from the desk and walked outside, no longer able to ignore the disturbance that was still getting underway in front of him; with the short time it had taken him to work his way through all that logic, the fight was still in its early stages.

_What were the causes for insecurity?_ he wondered as he pushed open the glass doors to the precinct and stepped out into the Chicago air. The answers were there practically before he'd finished the question. Nearly all of them involved a childhood trauma of some kind: bullying, neglect, abuse, excessive pressure to succeed, anything that pushed a child to feel that he or she wasn't and would never be 'good enough'.

Reid knew his own insecurities came from bullying but the personality for those types of problems was usually to become almost painfully timid (as in his case) or to become the aggressor themselves; Derek was neither. Derek's symptoms showed in his problems with intimacy and trust, suggesting he'd been betrayed by someone he'd idolized.

_Well, that makes sense, but betrayed how? _

Derek would've recovered from something so simple as an adult deserting him; he'd already proved he'd had minor difficulties when his father died but his relationship with the youth center director and his family had cured that. To cause this much difficulty, the problem would have been prolonged, as in months or years of it, and would likely have been something he couldn't take to either of those support groups, something that made him feel isolated and alone with the problem.

Isolation…

Intimacy…

Abuse by someone he trusted…

Reid tensed, eyes staring startled and introspective as he studied the little paper in front of him, trying to see another way that this could have played out, another option he might have missed. It was chess, the most important chess game of his life that had huge repercussions if he was wrong; but all the facts fell neatly into place and not a single sign was missing. _How could they have missed this?!_

Without another thought, he darted back inside and snatched the keys to one of the SUV's off the desk where they'd been tossed before rushing back outside. Distractedly, he noted that the team and dectectives had apparently moved off to another location and Reid didn't stop to tell them what he'd realized; if he was right, and he was rarely wrong, it would be better that he handle this alone.

The fewer people that knew Derek's secret, the less it would break him to learn it wasn't a secret any more.


	2. Chapter 2

Hotch re-entered the common room in time to see Reid flying back out of it, the normally polite doctor nearly throwing an entering officer out of his way in his haste.

Eyebrows raised, he called, "Reid!", but the other profiler didn't seem to hear him, didn't even hesitate as he continued his rush out the doors and disappeared.

Having seen the keys in the doctor's hand, Hotch grabbed his cell and dialed Reid's number, intending to ask what had the younger man in such a frenzy; he knew Reid and knew that he'd likely just figured out something they all needed to know but, being Reid, had let his brain get in front of his actions again. That wasn't unusual for him; his brain worked on an entirely different level sometimes and jumped to conclusions that often left his teammates floundering to follow along, Hotch and Gideon included. Usually just a little prompting made him begin to make sense again, which was what Hotch intended to do now.

But when Reid didn't pick up on the first attempt, things became unusual. Reid always had his phone nearby and had quoted his phone-answering rate as 98.7 percent; no one had been surprised he put the effort into figuring that out, and they were even less surprised when he told them a second attempt had an answering rate of 100% barring the fact that he physically could not get to the phone, which he then amended was rare.

So when the second attempt went unanswered, things became worrisome; on the third, Hotch was as close as he ever came to panicking.

He nearly ran out to the parking lot, almost hoping that Reid had been attacked rather than believe his other conclusion, which was that Reid was deliberately ignoring him.

No such luck; the second conclusion, as improbable as it was, had to be right. Reid obviously knew something, and, judging by the way he was deliberately not answering his phone, it was something he clearly didn't want anyone else to know. Grabbing his phone again, he speed-dialed for Garcia.

"Office of Infallible Wisdom, what services may I provide today?" her cheerful voice asked.

"Garcia, I need you to track the GPS of one of our vehicles," Hotch requested, stopping himself just short of saying why; no reason to panic the technical analyst just yet. They didn't have the time.

"Will you guys ever give me something actually interesting to do?" she replied almost scornfully. "According to this, one of them is still right outside the police station, coincidentally where all your cell phones are, the other…"

A quick pattering of keys, a pause, another quick patter, more forceful-sounding even through the cell phone. Faster tapping, another pause, and then, "Hotch? Sir, I can't find the other SUV, even when I broadened the search. What's going on?"

Hotch sighed. "Reid just took off by himself in the other vehicle; he must have disabled the GPS." _Damn that kid is quick_, he swore silently, wondering how he managed to get it disabled, get in, and drive off in the seconds it had taken Hotch to reach the door.

"All right, then, checking for his phone," Garcia said determinedly above the renewed tapping.

"Don't bother, Garcia, I know what you'll find; if he remembered to turn the GPS in the car off, his phone will be off as well," Hotch sighed.

"Sir, why would our genius do that?" the analyst asked again.

"I'll let you know as soon as I figure that out for myself. Thanks, Garcia," he sighed, closing the phone.

Hotch was not looking forward to trying to retrace the prodigy's sometimes nearly illogical thought processes but that was the only way to know where the other profiler had gone; with a sigh of frustration, he went to find the rest of the team. There wasn't much chance that they'd be able to figure out where he'd gone or what he knew but maybe the remaining four of them would be enough to equal the one young genius. If that failed, they could only wait for him to call and fill them in, which was not going to sit well with any of them.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: So, in these past days since I posted the first two chapters, I've received more alerts, reviews, and favorites than I have I think on all my other stories combined! A huge thank you goes out to all of you; here's your reward!

~Shadow

* * *

Derek Morgan hugged himself close behind a brick wall as a cruiser rolled slowly past, barely breathing as an industrial flashlight illuminated all the shadowed corners around him.

He knew he'd been wrong to run and knew there'd be hell to pay for it later, especially from his team. He already knew what they thought of his penchant for dealing with situations on his own without asking for back-up; Hotch had made that impeccably clear only a few months ago.

But even that dressing-down had been nothing to what he received when he got home, seeing Spencer's lanky frame curled miserably on the couch, waiting for him to come back and trying so hard to pretend it didn't bother him… Derek had never felt so guilty in his life and it had nearly been enough to cure him of his 'dangerous bravado,' as his lover had so elegantly put it; Spencer hadn't even had to say a word.

But tonight was a different story. This wasn't bravado or a desire to prove himself once again. There were some things that should never be known, that should never be acknowledged aloud; his childhood, what had happened to him… it didn't bear repeating.

Hotch had been so close, entirely too close to realizing what had happened, and Derek couldn't stand that; and if Hotch had nearly realized the truth of it, then Spencer had to be five steps even closer and that scared him more than anything else. He would break if he saw the pity he knew would be in the genius' eyes every time he looked at him, if things between them changed because of what had happened.

Spencer was the very best thing he had, the person that made he want to keep living when he walked into another little hell on earth and wished he didn't have to keep doing this. He wouldn't be able to stand it if Spencer knew the truth about the dirtiness of his past.

He was going to fix this on his own.

He'd seen the director's newest toy yesterday, had recognized the signs from his own forbidden past, and hated himself again for the weakness that had made him hide his shame for so many years and let the predator take another victim. If he'd been stronger, if he hadn't been so damn scared, he'd have been able to prevent this from ever happening, from leaving another boy at the mercy of a molester. He was an FBI agent, supposedly the best of the best; he was supposed to protect people from the world's evil, not leave them to fend for themselves against it.

But he was a coward and he was weak and in the end he hadn't been able to do a single damn thing because of it. He hated that most of all.

Morgan shot a quick look around the wall as the cruiser rolled onto the next street, oblivious of how close he'd been; by now they had to have discovered his absence so he could only assume that the heightened patrols he'd seen were just for him. He doubted anything else would have had Gordinski stirring up the station like a bull in a beehive, or whatever the saying was.

He didn't realize he was waiting for Spencer to correct him until the correction didn't come; Spencer would have known what the actual saying was, he always knew shit like that.

Part of Derek curled up inside of him, feeling alone and abandoned out here on the street knowing that no one knew where he was or what he was doing. Even when he didn't want it, when Derek was out on a mission he knew in some part of him that he'd always have back-up and though he wouldn't admit it, he counted on it.

It was much harder to do this when he knew that if things went south, and he was expecting them to go there in a big way and do it fast, there'd be no rescue this time.

_But this is how I want it_, he told himself firmly, forcibly shaking off the doubts and focusing on the building and road in front of him to the exclusion of all else. _I will survive this_.

The dark road was clear, no sign of anyone around here at this time except for one tiny light in the one of the basement windows in the youth center. The man was there, all right, like he usually was; apparently more than one habit hadn't changed, though working late was far more innocent than the other things he was guilty of doing.

Pulling his worn leather jacket closer around him, Morgan eased out onto the street, intending to make a line for the back door and end what he should have finished a long time ago. He made his steps as silent as he knew how, ghosting across the street, totally focused on reaching that one door.

When a set of brilliant headlights flicked on and painted him as clear as day against the backdrop of the night, he froze for one critical moment; that was all it took.


	4. Chapter 4

Reid drove manically through Chicago's streets, lights on to get people out of his way but no sirens; he didn't want any help from the PD should he run into a patrol car. Like this, they'd assume the situation was already in hand.

He ran the map through his head again, tracing the route to the youth center, and turned a hard corner, the tires screeching. He was frantic with worry, his heart racing so fast he was lightheaded; he knew he had to breathe and calm down, but it was nearly a physical impossibility.

Derek was in danger, from himself and from the director; if didn't get there in time, if he was already too late… the Derek he knew might be past saving.

A block away, Reid turned the headlights off and made his way slowly toward the dimly lit center, trying not to hit anything on the nearly dark road. It would be just like him to get this far and then blow it; Derek would tease him mercilessly once he found out. He already made fun of Reid's driving skills.

The thought brought a small smile to Reid's face, which then drained away when he remembered the circumstances; he'd consider himself lucky if Derek survived all this to tease him.

Half a block away, he parked quietly against the curb and shut off the engine. Now what? Derek was on foot, there was a chance Reid had beaten him to the center; did he wait outside and hope to see him going in?

But at the same time, this was Derek; he was fast, he was smart, and he was determined, _and_ he knew the territory; he could very well have made it here already, in which case Reid needed to be inside.

He hesitated, twisting anxiously in his seat; go or stay, go or stay? There had to be a back door to the place, didn't there? In which case, if Derek wasn't already inside, he might not even be able to see him go in; he wasn't likely to just walk in the front door. Therefore, he had to go inside.

Feeling infinitesimally better now that he had a decision, Reid scrambled to unbuckle his seatbelt; he hesitated over his gun, sitting secured in the glove-box. Bringing it could escalate whatever situation may ensue; leaving it would leave him unprotected with…

A pedophile.

Reid was trying very hard not to think about that, about the man he'd seen in the photo posing with Derek when he was a teen, his hands on the boy's shoulders. He knew he'd have to face it soon, because he couldn't ignore it when Derek was hurting himself because of it, but he didn't want to think about it.

He didn't want to add Derek, strong, protective Derek, to the victims list that kept building in his head, a list that, despite his best efforts, wouldn't stop growing.

A movement on the street that caught Reid's peripheral vision jerked his head around at the same time as he huddled down below the dashboard. He didn't want to be seen, especially in this neighborhood; a badge didn't count for a whole lot here and he was damn near worthless at fighting.

Squinting, he saw motion further down the street, barely discernable in the darkness; he squinted harder, his head moving forward until he nearly bashed his nose on the steering wheel. Light was reflecting dimly off a dull surface, near where the shoulders would be on a tall man; another light glinted off something near what would be the hip on the same tall person.

A gun? Could that be Derek? Wait, Derek's gun had been confiscated after the police had taken him in; Reid had seen it with his own eyes, sitting in the lockbox at the station.

"Come on, walk into the light," Reid whispered pointlessly, his hand reaching slowly for the glove-box of the car where his own gun was stashed.

By incredible coincidence, the figure turned right then, presumably to check the street, and the dim light from the streetlight flashed across his face; Reid's breath caught and he fumbled at the switches at the board before hitting the headlights and simultaneously tumbling out of the car.

Morgan spun fully around, startled by the sudden light, and froze in horror when he saw Reid; Reid, hurrying toward him in his peculiar awkward run, skidded to shocked halt at his expression. They stared at each other for a tense, painful moment, neither of them knowing what to say; then Morgan turned and took off into the dark.

"Derek!" Reid not-quite-shouted and ran after him, forgetting entirely about the car behind him with the door still wide open, keys in the ignition. Derek mattered, he was the only thing that mattered.

"Derek, stop!" he called, barely able to see the shadow that was Derek running in front of him turn down an alley.

"Spencer, go away. Don't get involved with this!" Derek called back. _Great, just great_, Reid thought, he was almost out of breath already and Derek sounded like he was just walking. This chase had been pretty much doomed from the start; Morgan had several yards of head start already and was only getting further away.

"Derek, don't!" he pleaded. "Please!" Eyes on Derek, trying to keep track of him in the gloom, Reid caught sight of the trashcan in the alley too late; he ran full into it, unable to even try to avoid and went down hard. The can clattered to the ground as he tried to catch himself on it; the ground rose up to meet him and he gave a half-strangled noise of pain as his shoulder connected first, then his head.

He blinked, seeing stars for a moment and could only lie there, disoriented; when he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, he struggled to sit up, holding his injured shoulder and knowing that he'd lost. Derek would be far away by now and there was zero percent chance he could catch up with him.

Muttered swearing manifested by his ear and dark hands covered his shoulders; Reid turned his head in shock and saw Derek crouched beside him, gently helping him sit up fully, concern in his dark eyes.

"Damn it, Spencer!" he swore, his angry tone belying his careful hands. "You know just how to give me a heart attack, don't you? Is there a day that goes by that you don't get hurt?" he asked in exasperation, examining the younger man's shoulder.

"At least it got you to stop," Reid said weakly when he remembered how to speak, grimacing as Derek rolled his shoulder gently to assess the damage. Reid turned his hand over, feeling the sting that meant cut skin; he'd been hurt so many times that it was easy to tell what kind of injury it was just by the pain.

Morgan cupped Reid's hand in his own, cradling it as he examined it in the dim light.

"You idiot, I was already stopping," he chided. "I don't think you know how ridiculously hard it is to resist when you plead like that; it's like kicking a puppy. These look pretty bad, you need to get this cleaned, especially with all this on the ground back here."

"Thanks for reminding me," Reid said with distaste, feeling something inside him loosen at Derek's closeness. It always happened like that; whenever Derek was around, things always seemed better, safer. It was mildly irrational and very dangerous when it happened in the field, but all the same Reid felt better with his hand in Derek's. "Help me up, please?"

Derek stood and pulled him up effortlessly. Reid brushed himself off with his good hand and Derek helped; when he was done, they stood there for a moment, feeling the awkwardness building between them.

Now that were within talking distance, Reid found he had no clue what to say_. No, actually, that wasn't true_, he thought; there was too much to say and all of it was equally important and he couldn't decide what should come out first.

He bit his lip and fidgeted, looking at Derek's face and away again as if uncertain whether eye contact would upset the other man. Each time it happened, Derek's eyes grew a little more hurt, a little more withdrawn.

"Derek," Reid finally said, looking helplessly at the older profiler's closed face. Derek's forehead wrinkled, his eyes showing his pain, and he looked away at the ground.

"Derek, I'm so sorry," Reid whispered, not sure what he was apologizing for. For scaring him, maybe, or for the mistreatment he'd had at the hands of the police. Or for not seeing the signs that were right in front of him and letting him suffer alone. For figuring out the truth when he so obviously wanted it hidden. For the pain that would come when the rest of the team found out. For not saving him.

It was all of those things and none of them and for other things that had yet to happen.

"You know, then? About Buford?" Derek asked woodenly, his shoulders stiff.

Reid nodded shakily, his head barely moving. They were silent for a moment, the tension between them sharp enough to cut them both. Then Morgan whirled away with enough force to make Reid stumble back in a fear he'd never admit to; a dark fist slammed into the brick wall on the other side of the alley, accompanied by an inarticulate roar, making Reid jump again.

"Damn it!" he yelled. "Damn it! Damn you and Hotch and Gideon and Gordinski! Why couldn't you all just leave this the fuck alone?!"

"Morgan… Derek," Reid said helplessly, not entirely surprised by his partner's, in his opinion, long-overdue breakdown. He knew better than to take Derek's abuse personally.

"Spencer, don't, all right?" Derek said evenly, his voice suddenly calm, suddenly enough that Reid began to fear Derek for an entirely different reason.

"I don't-" he hesitated, then sighed heavily, looking away, "I don't want you involved in this, any of you. Just leave it alone, okay, forget that you figured out my secret. Go back to the hotel, get cleaned up, and forget you saw me tonight."

Reid shook his head slowly, a confused frown building on his face; Derek hated that look. He hated seeing Spencer frowning like that, as if he was waiting for some sort of bad news that he knew was coming but couldn't anticipate. He looked so vulnerable… "I don't understand."

"I'm not safe to be with tonight," Derek gestured with his now-bleeding hand for emphasis. Reid hadn't forgotten. "I let… I let that man take another boy for a victim because I was too much of a coward to tell anybody what had happened to me. I can't let it continue; I can't let that kid feel like he hasn't got a person in the world to help him," Derek said, his voice firm despite the obvious pain in his face. He kept his eyes safely on the ground, away from the hurt growing on the prodigy's face. He didn't want to shut him out, but this wasn't his problem… He didn't understand what Derek was going to have to do… Wanted to do…

"But, Derek, it doesn't have to be you personally who fixes this," Reid said earnestly. "With your testimony and that child's, you know how this will work; people will be coming out of the proverbial woodwork. Let the BAU do its job, let us handle it. You don't have to get near him and put yourself through that," Reid said, still confused by his lover's seeming determination to hurt himself.

At his words, at the offer of a way out, Derek finally looked up and met his eyes but it wasn't with the expression he was expecting. All of Reid's instincts screamed in warning at the look in his eyes and Reid had to stop himself from backing up a step, feeling a cold chill settle over his heart.

_It's Derek_, he told himself fiercely, _of all people, he's the one least likely to hurt you!_

"You don't get it, Spence, I _want_ to end it," Derek said softly, his voice intent and hot in the darkness. The very words Reid did _not_ want to hear. "I want to make him pay for what he's done, me personally, not watch him get to sit behind bars where his biggest punishment is that he might get bored on occasion. You can't tell me that's fair for what he's done."

"So, what, you want to just walk in there and shoot him?! Where the hell did you get a gun, anyway? Because I know yours is still at the station," Reid replied, the pitch of his voice rising with the stress until he was hitting octaves usually reserved for females.

Derek smiled and it sent a shiver down Reid's spine. He knew the darkness that lived within the other man; what they did, what they saw… It was too much to hope that they wouldn't be contaminated in some way; it was inevitable. But Derek was so close, so close to letting the darkness have him, and he didn't even want to fight it.

"You didn't check the lockbox in the car for your weapon, did you? Sometimes you're just too predictable, genius," Derek said. Reid reflexively grabbed at his belt before remembering he'd checked the gun in the glove compartment of the car before they'd even gotten to the station again; he'd bet one of his degrees that it wasn't still there now.

"You can't do this! It's my gun, what do you think they're going to find when they do ballistics on it as a murder weapon? Are you trying to get me framed for this?!" Reid's words tumbled out so fast that only long practice made them make sense to Morgan, who looked stricken at the thought.

Reid didn't actually believe that but he was grasping at anything that might buy him more time to figure out what to do, what to say, _anything_ to delay Derek a little longer. He couldn't stop Morgan physically and he was very much regretting not telling Hotch now what he knew; embarrassment and hatred were a lot easier for him to bear than Morgan going to prison for the rest of his life for murder.

"No, Spence, no! Of course I'm not going to get you in trouble for this, I'm going to confess to the whole thing afterwards. I'll let them catch me with the gun in my hand if I have to."

Reid's mouth dropped open in disbelief; how could he possibly be so calm he was while saying that?

Derek gave that disquieting smile again. "Trust me, I've thought about this a lot."

Ignoring how much that statement disturbed him, Reid gathered his thoughts again. "And how do you keep me from getting in trouble for losing the gun to you in the first place? Are you going to try to make it look like I lost it to you in a fight, maybe give me a black eye to make it look more realistic?"

Derek paused, confused now as well as hurt. The transition from thoughts of revenge to concern about Reid was almost visible. "Spence, what is this? Why do you keep thinking I'm going to hurt you somehow? I thought you knew I wouldn't ever do something like that to you."

Reid laughed then, harsh, bitter, and slightly hysterical; Derek stood stunned by the sudden change in the young doctor. "What do you think you're doing now, Derek? You're contemplating _killing_ someone! Do you think that doesn't scare me? Do you think I'm not terrified of what happens after they catch you when you turn yourself in afterwards and go to jail for murder?"

He didn't want to say what came next, didn't want to admit his feelings out loud and look weaker than he already did, but he would do whatever it took, say whatever he had to say to keep Derek near him, even if the cost was his own pride in himself.

"I hate being alone, you know that! All these last years, I've been alone no matter how spatially close I was to the people around me; it was like a glass wall separated me from all of them, one that I couldn't break but I got to stand there, looking in and wondering what made me so completely different from everybody else, so… so… wrong! Then you stepped in and demolished that wall and I have never felt so… happy, safe, protected, whatever as I do when you're around. I can't lose that, Derek, I can't!"

Somewhere along the way, Reid had started crying and he was startled now to realize it. He stood there in the alley, feeling like the world was coming down around him, again, and all he could do was cry about it because it was so unfair, so terribly unjust that he should lose the one thing he needed after everything he'd seen and done.

Derek stared at him for one shocked moment more, then moved forward so suddenly it was all Reid could do not to back away. He wrapped strong arms around the young doctor, who buried his face in Morgan's shoulder immediately.

"I'm sorry, Spence," Morgan murmured in his ear. His arms shifted slightly and he held the younger man closer as tried to get a hold of himself, leaning his cheek against Reid's hair. "I'm sorry, I really am; I didn't mean to scare you like that, I just… Nevermind, it's not important. I'm not leaving, okay? I'm here and I won't ever go away. I won't leave you."

Reid gave a watery laugh that was still bitter and pulled back to look Morgan in the eye. "Are you certain? Because it was damned obvious that wasn't your intention just now."

Morgan hesitated another second, surprised by the fact that Reid swore, then closed the small distance between them and kissed Reid hard, shocking him out of his half-hearted anger. Reid's hands came up and he pulled the other profiler closer and kissed him back until they were both breathless. When they pulled apart, breathing hard, Reid locked eyes with Morgan again, who didn't look away this time.

"I'm not leaving, Spencer," he said, shaking his head slightly though his eyes remained on Reid. "Do you believe me now?"

Reid's face clouded, his eyes uncertain and looking altogether too young in the darkness. "I want to, I really want to," he whispered, pressing Morgan's hand to his cheek and holding it there; he met the other profiler's eyes reluctantly. "But that look in your eyes just now… Derek, I've seen that look before and I know you have, too; it's that look that the UnSubs get, the ones that you know are going to turn out really bad, the ones that _enjoy_ killing just for the sake of killing itself. You're walking on the line between being one of us and being one of them; I don't want to see you fall over it."

"You'll keep me on the right side, Spence. I trust you. You came for me just now, you figured it out even when I didn't want you to, and you stopped me; you brought me back to myself just by being here. I won't fall, not while you're with me," Derek replied, his voice low and certain. The look in his eyes, trusting, certain, and warm, made Reid shiver again, for an entirely different reason.

"Come on, pretty boy; let's go back to the hotel and get you cleaned up."

And Reid allowed himself to be towed along by the hand, telling himself that Derek knew what he was doing, he always did, and if he needed help again, he'd ask for it.

In trying to believe that, he did what Hotch, what Gideon had taught him never to do; he ignored the instinct that told him that something was still wrong, because he didn't want to face what could happen if he was right.

There are times when being right is worse than being wrong.


	5. Chapter 5

"So, basically, we have nothing," Hotch said, back at the station and still trying to decipher Reid's thought processes.

The remaining four of the team plus one long-distance computer analyst were tired and frustrated, he could see it in their movements, the set of their faces, their slumped shoulders. "Garcia, are you sure there's no way to track either of them?"

On the laptop screen, Garcia shook her head, looking terrified that she would have to give him more bad news; she usually looked that way when she was worried and trying her best to find them something to work on. Her fingers tapped the boards in front of her, eyes flicking presumably over the screens, before she finally met his eyes.

"I'm sorry, sir, I have a tap waiting to trace them but they've both turned their phones off; I'm helpless until they turn them back on."

"It's okay, Garcia, thank you for trying," Hotch sighed.

He wanted to add, 'It's not your fault that my agents are entirely too smart for their own good,' but figured that would be less than helpful at the current time. Hotch stifled his growl of frustration; Garcia looked close to tears as it was.

Everyone around knew that she was worried about both the missing agents, but Morgan being in danger always made her particularly scared. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do to help her. His eyes strayed to Gideon who was sitting as close to being in the corner as he could get, staring out the window into the darkness; the older man was always a challenge to read but if he had to guess, Hotch would have said he was worried, and it wasn't hard to determine the reason.

Reid was like the man's son; for him to go AWOL was even more stressful than when Morgan did it. Deep down, all the agents knew that Morgan could take care of himself, likely even if he lost his weapon, but Reid just… couldn't. It was a fact of life that they tried to work around but to have the doctor out there, alone, was almost more than they could stand.

"He just took off?" JJ repeated for the billionth time, still trying to make sense of it; there was another person who was worried about Reid, probably almost as much as Gideon was.

Somewhere along the way, JJ had designated herself as one of Reid's protectors. The blonde woman had a sharp tongue when it came to Reid's defense; even Morgan had been known to be dissuaded from teasing Reid when she was around. "I just don't get this, it's not like him at all."

"I need to take a break," Emily said, pushing herself out of her chair. "I've been staring at these notes so long my eyes are blurring."

"I think we all need to get some rest," Hotch agreed, holding up a hand to forestall the ensuing protestations from the women; Gideon merely looked at him with that look that said nothing in particular.

"We're no closer to figuring out where Reid has gone or why than we were when we started, although we've pretty much assumed that it has something to do with Morgan; we're all tired and it's not going to help us get anywhere. I think we should all head back to the hotel and at least try to rest; if any of us think of something new, we'll let the others know."

Emily looked secretly relieved at this directive and stretched before gathering her papers. JJ looked murderous as she gathered her things roughly and shoved them into her bag; Hotch started to feel sympathetic for what was waiting for the two agents when they finally turned up, then remembered how much of a headache the last hour had been and decided they deserved it.

He had gathered nearly all of his own things before he realized Gideon hadn't moved.

"Coming, Hotch?" Emily asked, halfway out the door with JJ behind her.

"I'll meet you at the car," he replied, eyes on Jason; Emily shrugged and left with JJ in tow.

"Jason?" he asked. The older man turned his attention away from the window again, facing Hotch blandly, only slight curiosity on his face. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," the other man said with his typical quick smile that didn't reach his eyes. Hotch raised his eyebrows.

"You should be getting some sleep, too, you know."

Gideon nodded. "Yeah, I know. I'm just going to wait here a bit longer."

"Any particular reason why?" the dark-haired agent asked. Gideon shrugged, making his 'not really' face.

"Just a hunch. Go get some sleep, Hotch."

Sighing at the dismissal and wondering if Jason would ever get any easier to understand, Hotch went.


	6. Chapter 6

"Spencer, where are you driving us?" Derek asked in confusion. "The hotel is in the opposite direction."

Reid raised a single eyebrow as he stared out at the road; Morgan sighed. Reid was being inscrutable again, which meant that Morgan would get his answer when Reid wanted him to have it and not a moment before.

"But, of course, you already knew that; no need to be so smug about it," he said, mildly disgruntled. Reid smiled quickly but said nothing.

More minutes passed and still Morgan didn't know where they were going; they were nearly almost entirely out of Chicago and he was getting increasingly anxious about it. "Unless you're kidnapping me, Reid, will you please tell me where the hell we're going?"

Reid stayed silent for a moment, then said quietly, "'Temptation is like a knife, that may either cut the meat or the throat of a man; it may be his food or his poison, his exercise or his destruction.'"

"You're quoting something at me again."

"John Owen," Reid replied in the same tone as before, nodding a little.

"And that has what to do with this situation?" Morgan asked, a little irritably.

Silence reigned as Reid turned into a motel parking lot and shut off the engine. He kept his hands on the wheel, eyes staring out the windshield.

"I trust you, Derek, believe me, I do. You meant what you said earlier, about not leaving me, I know that." Finally, he turned and looked at the other man. "But I thought it was better to get you as far away from the situation as possible. Just in case."

Morgan raised his eyebrows in disbelief; Reid settled back against the door and dropped his eyes, pulling in on himself like he was afraid Derek would hit him for what he'd said. Morgan's sudden anger drained away at the sight and he sighed heavily.

"Reid," he said, waiting for the doctor to look up; he didn't. "Spencer," Derek said more gently, leaning over and placing a hand beneath Reid's chin, encouraging him to look up. Finally, after a hesitation, he did, slowly.

"Pretty boy, why are you so afraid of me suddenly?" Derek near-whispered, sounding pained. Reid, though he kept his face tilted up, dropped his eyes again.

"I'm not," he said, entirely unconvincing.

"You're a bad liar, Reid," Morgan said in reproach. "What's really going on?"

Reid blew out a sigh that washed over Derek's hand, still holding his chin; gently, he disengaged and started to get out of the car. "Let's just… Let's just get a room, all right? We'll talk once we're inside, I'm thoroughly fatigued of seeing the interior of this car."

Stifling a noise of protest, Morgan followed; truly big words, never a good sign.

Once inside, Reid stared off into space as Morgan, shooting worried looks at him, acquired and paid for a room with Reid's card, which was handed to him wordlessly. He hoped Garcia wasn't yet worried enough to start tracking either of their bank accounts; his own was more than likely being watched, if only by the cops, so it was out of the question for the time being.

"Go shower," Reid said immediately as they entered the room and he sank down onto the bed, preventing the start of the conversation Morgan really wanted to have. "I need to make a call."

"To who?" Derek replied, deciding that other conversation could wait a second or two and already stripping off his shirt. Reid kept his eyes firmly on the blank cell phone in his hands, knowing he'd get distracted if he watched Morgan. "I thought the point of coming here was to avoid the team finding us; that's what you said, anyway."

"I'm not calling Hotch," Reid replied, shaking his head a little. "I'm calling Garcia."

"What? Why?" Derek asked, standing in front of him and looking down. Reid was suddenly finding it much harder to concentrate.

"Because it's not fair to her when we do this; she hates being, for all intents and purposes, chained to her computers in her office, especially when you go missing. I don't want her to be anxious any longer than she has to be."

"That's very thoughtful, Spencer, but this is baby girl we're talking about here, the one person we need to stay hidden from if we don't want to be found. Calling her is even worse than calling Hotch," Derek said.

"I'm taking a risk here but I'm fairly certain it will work. Have you noticed the time? Hotch, despite being concerned for us, has likely forced all of the team to return to the hotel to get some rest, not that he'll be following his own orders. If that's true, they won't be back until the morning so Garcia won't technically have to lie to him unless he directly asks her if she knows where we are, which is unlikely at this point because he rarely calls her from the hotel.

In addition, Garcia is likely home by now as well, so she's separated from all her very scary computers and her home laptop is much slower at traces than her office-issued ones, which makes no sense considering all of the other modifications she's made to it, some of which I'm fairly certain are illegal."

Morgan waited patiently for the doctor to realize he was going on a tangent, which he did. With an apologetic look, he continued, "So all Garcia has to do it trust that I- that we know what we're doing, which we do, because I plan to have us back by tomorrow to get things straightened out," he said, no longer able to keep ignoring the fact that Derek was standing half-naked in front of him.

"Will you _please_ go take that shower? You know how distracting that is."

Derek grinned, the real grin this time, not the scary one, which didn't help Reid gather his thoughts at all. He realized he was staring and forced himself to look away; Morgan's smile grew wider. "Yeah, I know."

"Narcissist," Reid muttered.

"Genius," Morgan replied.

"That's not an insult," Reid protested the illogistics of that reply.

"It wasn't supposed to be," Morgan returned as he headed for the bathroom, and Reid flushed, embarrassed, self-conscious, and entirely pleased at the same time. He waited until he heard the water start before starting his call.

"Spencer Reid, where are you?!" Garcia all but shouted into his ear, picking up the phone before the first ring had even ended.

Reid winced; it was the angriest he'd ever heard her.

"No, forget that, you know what, I'll find you anyway because it's clear you can't be bothered to call or keep your teammates informed of what you were doing or where you were! No word, no call, not the slightest piece of contact and I know you turned your cell phone off on purpose!"

"Garcia, Garcia, listen to me, please. Stop the trace," Reid begged, figuring he had about eight seconds left before he had to turn the phone off.

"Not a squid on a mountain's chance, Spencer! Do you know how worried we've been?"

"Yes, I know, I'm sorry, I'll explain the whole thing," he promised, silently amending _As much of it as I can_. "But either stop the trace or I turn off the phone again until we're home."

"Have you lost that fearsome mind of yours? You're going to be kicked out of the BAU!" Garcia choked out, almost speechless with shock. Reid winced again. "Don't you dare turn off this phone!"

"Garcia, it's about Derek," Reid whispered desperately. He didn't want to tell her Derek's secret, it wasn't his place and he didn't want to ruin Garcia's whole world with yet another ugly truth but she wasn't giving him any choice. And Derek was something special to her; if there was anything she wouldn't do for him, he had yet to find it. He played shamelessly on that feeling, wondering how much more twisted of a person he could get, manipulating her so casually like that; sometimes he wondered exactly how deep that darkness ran in all of them, himself especially. In this job, this life, there was just no escaping…

There was silence on the other end of the phone, followed by the quick pattering of a computer keyboard.

"Talk. Quickly."

Reid sighed and ran a hand over his weary face. "I found Derek, Garcia. He's okay, he's here with me. But he needs some time to figure things out, time away from the team. He probably needs time away from me, too, but I don't think that'd be safe for him or the director."

"The director? As in the youth center director? The one who vouched for Derek to get his record cleared? What's he got to do with this?" Garcia asked curiously.

Reid resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall; he hadn't meant to say that. "Please, Garcia, believe me when I say it's not my secret to tell. It was something from his past that I don't think he'd ever really faced and it's coming back now to bite him. He just needs tonight to get sorted out; I promise I'll have him back to the team tomorrow, everyone will understand, and we'll be back in Quantico by this time tomorrow night. Please, trust me on this?"

She gave a heavy sigh of frustration. "What could be so bad that he would feel the need to hide from his team, his family? I don't like this Spencer, I really don't."

Engrossed in the conversation, Reid hadn't heard Derek exit the shower. He jumped and nearly fell off the bed when the other profiler tapped him on the shoulder from behind, holding his hand out for the phone, eyes unreadable and clad only in a towel.

Reid dropped his head, ashamed and feeling suddenly like he was six years old again and had forgotten to make sure his mother had lunch made for her before he left for school. He mumbled into the phone, "Derek's here, he wants to talk to you," before silently handing it over. He held onto it for just as second as Morgan sought to take it from him.

"Don't hurt her, Derek. She doesn't deserve that," he murmured. Reid released the phone when Derek gave a slight, acknowledging nod and Derek put it to his ear before returning to the bathroom with it.

Reid sighed and prepared for bed, trying hard not to listen to the conversation in the bathroom; it was easier than he thought, he didn't really want to hear what Derek was saying anyway. His imagination and his memory of past cases were bad enough. The time was coming to face the truth and Reid really wasn't looking forward to it.


	7. Chapter 7

"Hey, Baby Girl," Derek said into the phone, shutting the bathroom door behind him and enclosing himself in the too-small room again.

For a moment there was no answer, no sound on the other end; Derek frowned and checked the phone. "Garcia?" he asked, seeing it was still connected.

"You don't get to call me baby girl right now, Derek Morgan. Don't you dare act like this is fine, like everything's normal." Garcia's voice, though angry, wavered with tears; Derek rubbed a hand over his head and blew out a breath.

"Garcia, I'm sorry," Morgan said quietly. How much longer was he going to have to deal with this? He knew he deserved it, but there was only so much guilt a person could handle… "Listen, Penelope, honestly, I'm sorry for worrying you. I just had some… some things to sort out. It's okay now, I'm all right; we're all alright."

"No, things are not 'all right'!" she quoted bitterly. "You always do this! Go running off on your own without a care for the rest of your team and all the other people who care about you, who worry about what you're doing out there alone in the field! Why, why do you always do this?!"

"Penelope-"

"No, Derek! You don't get to talk me out of this one! You're hiding something from me, from the man who loves you more than anything, and from the rest of your team, your family! For once, I get to be mad at you and stay that way for as long as I want! You have forty-eight hours to get back to the rest of the team with our beloved and hopelessly innocent doctor or I will personally call down all the law enforcement officers I can get a hold of to drag you back here!" And with that threat, she slammed her hand down on the phone in her office, ending the call.

Derek stared at the phone in his hand as if it were liable to bite him; he'd never heard Garcia so angry, especially not with him. It hurt and he didn't want to admit it. Shaking his head, bewildered, he exited the bathroom again and headed for his go-bag.

Reid was standing by the window, gazing out the sliver of space he'd opened between the curtains; he leaned against the wall, arms crossed his chest. Derek's mind unhelpfully assessed his behavior; his posture said vulnerable but closed off, he was introspective even as he looked out into the night. Derek stopped his thoughts before any more could occur to him; the foremost rule on the team was never to profile each other.

Pulling on the tee shirt and sweats that would be pajamas for the night, he called, "Reid?"

The doctor shifted, slowly looking around at Derek. His face, for what may have been the first time in all the time Derek had known him, was unreadable. "What is it, genius?" Derek asked, masking his discomfort with his usual humor and grin. It was half-hearted at best and faded quickly when Reid didn't respond; Derek didn't have to ask, he knew what was coming.

"You know what, Derek," Spencer replied as if reading his mind. It wasn't so impossible as that; Spencer knew him well, almost inside and out. At worst it was an educated guess for the young genius.

"I don't want to have this conversation," Derek replied, just shy of brusque. He turned away and busied himself with rearranging half of the full-sized bed that they were to share.

"I know," Spencer said. Derek shot him a quick look; Reid was serious, more serious that he'd ever been, without even the slightest trace of his usual discomfort with high-tension conversations. He looked down, squeezed his hands into fists at his sides, and looked determinedly back up at Morgan.

"It wasn't really a request."

Derek blinked in surprise. It lasted for a few seconds before cooling into a controlled sort of anger. "No offence, Reid, but it's not your business," Derek said, the warm tones of his voice belying the chill in his words.

Reid stepped forward, pressing the confrontation; Morgan stood up straight, threatened.

"It is my business when you go off without trusting your team or me, when you admit to wanting to kill a man in cold blood, and then nearly follow through with it. You're a danger to us all."

"I'm what?" Derek replied disbelievingly, his mouth open in an incredulous smile.

"You heard me."

The smile was wiped off his face. "Listen, Reid, I don't know what you think you're doing but this conversation is over."

"You can't just arbitrarily decide to end a conversation because you don't like it!" Reid protested.

"Really? Watch me," Morgan replied, yanking back the covers with a little more violence than was strictly needed and proceeding to crawl into the bed.

"How'd it start, Morgan? He played football with you, right, taught you how to play? Did he walk in on you, maybe, in the dressing room in the youth center and you just shrugged it off, thinking maybe it was an accident? Or was he less subtle than that, just taking what he wanted before you realized what was happening?" Reid pressed.

Derek stiffened. "Drop it, Reid. Now." Derek's voice was dangerously low, threatening.

"Or did he tell you you were beautiful? Special? When did he start touching you, Derek?" Reid was shaking inwardly but he, for once, had good control of his voice; it didn't waver in the slightest and he was proud of himself, certain he was getting to Derek, was going to get him to talk.

Then Morgan leapt off the bed.


	8. Chapter 8

One moment he was on the bed, halfway under the blankets, then next he had Reid slammed up against the wall, one arm across his throat, with no memory of moving.

When he came to himself again, Reid was grasping at his arm, both long-fingered hands barely big enough to close around his forearm; his eyes were wide, terrified, his mouth open but no sound emerged.

Shocked out of his rage, Derek dropped his arm like he'd been burned, throwing himself backwards, away from the doctor who slid bonelessly to the floor, staring at him. He slammed into the bedstand and welcomed the pain.

Derek had thought that he wouldn't be able to bear the pity that he'd have seen in the genius' eyes when he found out the truth, that that was the worst look that Spencer could direct toward him. He was wrong. What he was seeing now was a hundred, no, a thousand times worse.

Spencer was terrified.

Of him.

For good reason.

Derek dropped to the ground as well, staring blankly at his hands and drawing in heaving breaths.

… _the man who loves you more than anything…_

Derek shook his head wildly as Garcia's words stabbed through his mind, burning him like acid. Over and over he shook he head until he couldn't stop shaking it, until all of him was shaking, too.

Across the room, Dr. Spencer Reid was trying to regain control of himself, trying to stop the adrenaline that was pounding through him in reaction to Derek's attack. He shouldn't have pressed, he knew he shouldn't have… It was just, Derek wasn't talking and he needed to, needed to get this out of him… But he had refused to talk…

He was hyperventilating, he needed to stop, he was getting dizzy. He was shaking, too; was it the hyperventilation too, or the fear? Both, maybe. Probably.

Oh God. What had just happened? Had Derek really just tried to hurt him?

He couldn't think; he was frozen in place, unable to accept what had happened, to think what to do now.

Neither moved. Time passed as they stayed frozen, eyes on the other, terrified. Twice, Derek opened his mouth to say something, widened his eyes as if something particularly terrible had just appeared behind Spencer, and rapidly snapped his mouth closed again.

For his part, Spencer couldn't bring himself to try to say anything at all, his voice frozen in his throat as his brain ran in the same circles over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel futilely trying to escape the snake right behind it.

The ring of Spencer's still-on cell phone scared them both; Reid tried to jump away from the noise in reflex and only ended up smashing his head into corner of the wardrobe holding the TV, yelping in pain as it contacted the same spot that had cracked into the road of the alleyway previously.

"Spencer!" Derek said in sudden concern, grabbing the phone and quickly turning it back off before moving forward as if to help. His voice and his movement startled Reid, who threw himself around the wardrobe, scooting backwards away from the older profiler who'd frozen when he moved, the terror on the doctor's face slashing him to his core.

"I-I-I gotta g-go clean up. H-hands, remember?" Spencer said in a rush, holding up his scraped hands both as proof and as if he was going to push the other man away. Derek nodded slowly, trying not to scare the other man further. This was only getting worse with everything he did, he was screwing this up so badly…

"Okay. Okay, Reid. I'll be waiting in that chair when you come, out, okay? Take as much time as you need," Derek said as if to a terrified animal, which, at this point, was not that far off base.

Reid, nodding frantically, threw himself into the bathroom, slamming the door shut with a bang and the audible click of the lock. Derek dragged himself into the chair without caring how he got into it, trying to ignore the muffled sobbing that had started nearly as soon as the door had closed.

What had he done?


	9. Chapter 9

Reid yanked on all the taps in the bathroom he could reach; he even flushed the toilet for all the good it did. After that, the tears started despite his best efforts to stop them.

He'd been scared countless times before; with his job, it was almost a prerequisite. He'd been captured, mentally traumatized, held at gunpoint, shot, infected with a toxin of bioterrorism proportions, and beaten within and past an inch of his life. But he'd never, in all that time, been more scared, more traumatized than by what had just happened.

Derek wasn't supposed to hurt him. Derek was his brother, his friend, his lover, and most of all, his protector. He was supposed to be able to trust him above all others; but that out there had been something else, a side of Derek he knew was there but had never really seen. He was exceedingly good at controlling himself; he'd never lost it like that, not to him, not to anyone.

_And are you actually surprised he snapped, genius? You pushed him and kept going even when he told you to back off. You deserved it_, a little voice said in his head.

Reid was used to that voice, it was his own, always pointing out all his failures and shortcomings. But it had a point; he should have known better than to prod Derek when he was so tenuously balanced emotionally. He'd as much as admitted earlier that he was walking the line; Reid had gone and pushed him right over it.

"I really am an idiot," Reid whispered, staring himself in the eye in the mirror. There was no mark on his neck, though he felt like there should be some testament to what had happened, some reminder. But he didn't really need a physical mark, now did he? The mental ones were going to be bad enough as it was.

"Why'd I push? It would have been much safer to have approached this situation more slowly, desensitizing him to the trauma."

"And then I ran," Reid realized. His eyes widened in the mirror.

"Crap." Derek was probably sitting outside in that chair, wondering if it was possible for him to punch himself as punishment. He always leaned toward going overboard when it came to making up for what he perceived were things he'd done wrong; he'd always had an overblown sense of justice.

Of course, that was counting on the fact that Derek was still here.

Reid paled. What if Derek had fled after what he'd done?

Reid leapt for the flimsy bathroom door, nearly tripping as the little floor towel slid out from under him. Derek was angry, he knew that; how far would it be from being angry at himself to blaming Buford for all this poor luck? He was already unstable. He scrabbled for the door handle, slipping and missing in his haste. If he'd done this, if he'd caused Derek to run off and let him get to Buford…

Finally wrenching the door open, terror beating in his throat, he all but screamed "Derek!" as he tumbled through the doorway. Morgan shot out of his chair, startled and grasping for the gun that was normally at his waist but wasn't there now.

"What, Reid, what is it?!" Derek said, scanning the room for danger. Reid could only stand there, mortified that he'd let his imagination get the best of him and make him overreact so obviously.

"N-Nothing, Derek, it's nothing. Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you like that," he stuttered. Derek visibly relaxed, running a hand over the top of his hand.

"Don't do that, Pretty Boy, I thought someone was going to attack you."

And with that thoughtless statement, the silence was back. Glaring and more horrible than the first time.

Morgan turned away first, muttering something that sounded like, "Open mouth, insert foot" followed by a string of uncomplimentary phrases about himself. He now stood in front of the window, fists clenched so tightly his shoulders had a fine tremble to them. Reid took a shaking breath that kept hitching in his throat before he moved forward.

"Derek," he said gently, proud that at least his voice didn't tremble. Though the last time he'd thought that… Nevermind. He stopped the thought before it started.

The other profiler didn't move much but the slight tilt to his head said he knew Reid was there. The doctor reached out slowly, cautious for both of them, and closed one hand around, or mostly around, Derek's bicep, tugging gently to get him to turn and face him. When he did, Reid didn't let go, instead letting his hand trail down Derek's arm, fingers tracing over familiar flesh until it stopped, resting lightly on his wrist.

He looked at the contrast between their skin colors; Derek was a warm dark brown, by far not the darkest he'd ever seen but his skin had almost a comforting color, like melted chocolate. And it was smooth, silk over the steel of the muscles just below the surface.

Reid was a pale, almost ghostly contrast, still smooth but softer, somehow; he lacked the muscle definition Morgan had.

"What are you staring at, Spence?" Derek said, his voice soft and almost… pained? Reid looked up to see dark eyes looking back at him, saddened, scared, and confused. Reid's heart squeezed painfully. "How can you bear to touch me? What I did to you…"

"It's okay," Reid said, surprising himself because it was true. He blinked, fully realizing the truth of that and wondering just exactly when he'd reached that conclusion. He decided he'd have to have a long conversation with himself when he had a free moment; this weakness around Derek was becoming detrimental. But when Morgan opened his mouth, obviously to protest, Reid gently covered it with one hand, shaking his head while his eyes remained on Derek's.

"It's okay, Derek, really," he insisted, saying it again, this time with more conviction.

Derek's hand came up, gently encircled his wrist with his fingers, and he kissed his palm before pulling the hand away. "No, it's not. It won't ever be all right, what I did to you just now. I'm a grown man, over thirty years old, and my mama wouldn't hesitate to tan my hide so bad I wouldn't be able to sit for a week for losing my temper like that. That's if Des and Sarah didn't get to me first and beat me senseless for hurting you. They're rather fond of you, did you know that? Emily told me about your visit when she took her turn visiting me in the cell. You may not be good with kids or animals but you definitely bring out some sort of protective side in all females of childbearing age. Well, maybe not all because some of the people we deal with are just too far out there, but-"

Reid cut him off, leaning up and forward to press his lips to Derek's.

"You sound like me," Reid said, hesitantly amused when he pulled back. "I've never heard you ramble like that before."

Morgan stood stunned and silent before him. Slowly, he reached up with one hand and touched his lips that had so recently had Reid's against them, disbelieving. "How-?"

"Derek," Reid said in exasperation, "I love you, you dense, overprotective profiler. And don't ask why I do, because I didn't know how to answer that way back when you and I first started."

"You shouldn't-"

"I do anyway."

"But-"

"Kneel."

"What?"

"Kneel!" Reid repeated. He knew Morgan wasn't a big believer in God anymore, or maybe he should say, right now; he'd catch Morgan every now and again with a look that Reid associated with those who prayed. He wondered if maybe he was going too far, but he knew for all that Derek didn't want to talk to God, his need to apologize wasn't directed only at him. Morgan, confused but about willing to do anything Reid said at the moment, dropped to his knees.

"Now apologize."

Morgan looked down at his knees for a long moment before suddenly scrubbing at his eyes. "Reid, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, you can't possibly understand how sorry. I would give you anything I could, take it all back if it was possible. I will do anything you want, including leave if that's what you desire. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, no matter what it takes."

"Do you feel better now?" Reid asked quietly, slowly folding to the ground in front of his boyfriend.

"What?" Derek asked shakily. Reid resisted the urge to roll his eyes; Morgan had been saying that a lot tonight.

"Do you," Reid placed a hand over Derek's heart, "feel better now? Because I didn't need to hear it; I know you, Der, and I knew you were sorry from the moment you realized what you had done. I pushed you, forced you past what you could handle; I'm a profiler, I know better, I'm just as much to blame as you are."

"No-"

"And right now, I'm telling you not to argue. It's an issue, what happened in your past, and it needs to be addressed; the only condition of me forgiving you, which I know you will detest but comply with because it's me asking and because you know it's necessary, is that you get help for this. You need to talk to someone about what happened, both tonight and… before."

"Why are you being so understanding about this?!" Derek groaned, shooting to his feet and taking a couple steps away. Reid twitched in reflex at the sudden movement but climbed back up as well; he wasn't really surprised to see tears in Derek's over-wide eyes. He was so confused, so tired, and so overwrought that he didn't, couldn't think about what had just happened, couldn't understand how Reid could love someone like him.

"I understand humiliation, love. I understand degradation and public embarrassment. I understand secrets that can't be told. I may not understand you brand of all those things, but I do remember what they feel like; my past wasn't pleasant, not by far, but that's a topic for another night."

He stepped forward slowly, arms spread from his side as if trying to capture a scared animal ready to bolt. "Come here, Derek, it's okay. It's okay, I promise you," Derek took one hesitant step forward, trembling entirely now, and Reid gently enfolded him in his arms. He shook in Reid's arms, his nose brushing Reid's collarbone, his every breath ghosting over Reid's skin.

Everything in the position was achingly familiar to him; they often spent hours just holding each other, whenever one of them just couldn't shake the memories, the fear, or the depression that came from what they saw. Morgan needed that now more than ever, just the comfort of having someone he loved hold him close and tell him that it would be okay; for now, he would let himself believe it.

"It's okay, love, I promise. We'll fix it. We will talk about what happened, I won't just let it go away, but you'll chose the time; I won't push again."

And with that gentle understanding, the dam holding Derek's tears broke and left Reid holding a man so broken by memories the younger man wasn't one-hundred percent certain he'd ever be whole again.


	10. Chapter 10

Finally, he'd said the right thing.

Reid cringed every time he thought of his tension-induced rambling; it was like the circuit connecting his mouth and his brain went on overload and everything just came pouring out. Everyone had made fun of him at one point or another for it; today was one of the worst times he would always remember, when Emily had to step in and assure Derek's family that he wasn't talking about blaming Derek for this mess. Thank goodness Desiree and Sarah already knew what he was like from Derek's letters. Countless times, predictable reactions…

And he'd finally gotten it right.

Derek was resting quietly beside him now, both of them in the bed in their sleep clothes. For once, it was Reid sitting up, propped against pillows, with Derek's head on his shoulder. His breathing was deep and even but Reid knew he wasn't truly asleep, not yet; book in one hand, not really reading, Reid let his free hand wander in random patterns over Derek's arm and shoulder, feeling the slight rises and falls in his skin where his tattoos were.

Morgan shifted, one hand emerging from the blankets to rest, fingers spread, on Reid's abdomen. Reid twitched and shivered, the touch just this side of tickling. "Are you okay?" he asked, resting his pale hand on the back of Derek's neck. He knew Morgan found this comforting for some reason he didn't entirely understand.

"Yeah," Derek replied quietly. Some time passed, and then, "Are you?"

Reid smiled to himself. "Remind me some time to tell you what a public high school is like when you're twelve years old in a bunch of sixteen and seventeen year olds."

Derek's hand slid beneath his shirt to lay flat against his skin. His hand was warm and slightly rough; the touch wasn't sexual, though it often became so. No, they both just liked to touch each other, reminding themselves that this was real, that they were both here, now, safe for the time being from the horrors of their work. "That wasn't what I was referring to, and you know it."

Reid sighed, pulling his glasses off. "You sure you want to talk about this now?"

"Only if you do."

"You didn't hurt me, Derek, not physically. Mentally… I don't know yet. You scared me, but you already knew that much. It's just…"

"Just?" Derek prompted, half-fearful of what he was about to hear.

Reid shifted uneasily; Derek took the unconscious hint and sat up, reluctantly withdrawing his hand. Reid was looking down at his hands, twisting them anxiously in his lap. He had that look on his face that Derek hated so much, that one that made him look entirely too young. "You're-" was all he could make out of the following sentence that consisted mostly of muttering after that. He frowned in confusion, concern, and a host of other emotions he couldn't sort out.

"Spencer, you don't have-"

"You're supposed to be my protector!" Reid half-yelled, eyes squeezed shut as he spoke to his lap. Derek's eyes went wide at his sudden intensity. "You're supposed to be there and keep me from getting hurt, which, I understand is nearly an impossible task given my propensity for adverse events- I believe I've been injured in some way more than the rest of the team combined, if I remember correctly but still! I trust you, count on you to be there; you have this strange ability to predict exactly where you need to be in order to save my life, I guess I've kind of gotten used to it."

All of that was said with the kind of dazzling speed that took practice to understand. When he tapered off, Reid just sat there, still staring at his twisting hands while Derek tried to figure out just how deeply the damage had gone. Reid apparently decided to help him out.

"You're not supposed to hurt me," he said softly after another of the pauses that had been frequenting their conversations that night. "That was the one thing I needed you not to do."

Derek reached out, his eyes anguished, then stopped, unsure whether touching Reid would make things better or worse. Instead, he balled his hands up and pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes in utter frustration and bitter regret.

"Derek, don't-"

"I knew," he said flatly. "Somehow, somewhere, I always knew you thought something like that. I tried to live up to it, I did, for whatever reasons. And now I screwed it up so badly. I'm sorry, God, I'm so sorry…"

"I know," Reid sighed. He reached out, tracing his fingers over Derek's cheekbone. "Derek, I know!" Reid insisted a bit more loudly when Derek continued his murmured apologies. His fingers reached under Derek's chin, turning his face toward him. "You see now why I didn't want to tell you? I know you blame yourself, you always do when stuff like this happens."

"For good reason, don't you think?" Derek said sarcastically. Reid flopped back against the pillows.

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"Evidence your self hatred when there's no cause for it. I'm not mad at you, why should you be mad at yourself?"

"Because you should be mad at me! Hell, you should have thrown me out of this apartment and called Hotch and told him everything! How the hell can you still love me after that?"

Reid had finally had enough. He shot back upright, grabbed Derek's face between his hands, and roughly yanked the other profiler around to face him. "Stop it!" he demanded. "Stop blaming yourself, stop taking everything as if it was your fault and your fault alone, just stop!" Derek sat frozen in surprise.

"Damn it!" Reid yelled in frustration, swinging his legs out of the bed and standing up. He stalked to the door and for one terrible moment, Derek thought he was going to walk out. His heart literally stopped. Then Reid whirled and stalked back and Derek realized the genius was just pacing. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth… Morgan merely watched as the doctor wore himself out. Finally, he rubbed one hand over his face, muttering, "I need coffee."

Derek looked over at the table that always seemed to be present next to the beds in hotel rooms. The clock said 12:36. "Reid, it's past twelve o'clock in the morning, are you serious?"

"No," Spencer muttered, "I'm just a caffeine addict who right now could seriously use a fix."

"Come on, come back to bed," Derek coaxed. "How about we just let this go for tonight?" Reid sighed deeply as he walked back and, with his usual awkward sort of grace, clambered back into the bed.

"Let's. I detest jet lag," Reid muttered and Derek laughed softly. The youngest agent always tended to act more childishly when he was over-tired. Reid reached out and switched off the lamp before wiggling more securely into Morgan's arms.

"I love you, you realize that, right?"Derek whispered in Reid's ear, suddenly needing to make that perfectly clear.

Reid murmured sleepily, but with a distinct overtone of contentment.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Thanks again for all the alerts, favorites, and reviews! Lil'spencefan, you get the award for longest review I've ever received; thanks so much for your support, all of you!

~Shadow

* * *

Somewhere in the middle of the night, Derek jerked wide awake. Sleep-dazed and sitting up without remembering how he got there, heart pounding in his chest, Derek didn't even remember what had awoken him. He gasped for breath, pressing one hand to his chest to still the fear still thrumming through him; Reid muttered a drowsy complaint at his absence without really waking up. Derek used his free hand to brush Reid's hair back from his face, smoothing it comfortingly; Reid's murmuring turned even less intelligible before ceasing altogether.

Derek was struck, not for the first time, by how Reid looked as he slept. Everyone always said that sleeping people looked peaceful; with Reid, it was something a bit more than that.

It had taken Derek a while to figure out exactly what the look was and when he did, he was annoyed at himself for not seeing it sooner, and then depressed when he realized why he didn't recognize it.

Reid looked happy when he slept.

And Derek hadn't recognized it because Reid almost never looked happy while he was awake.

So Morgan had set out to change that as much as he could, and he liked to think that he was at least moderately successful about it. The rest of the team had noticed something was different; JJ, not surprisingly, had been the first to pick up on it. She'd pulled Morgan aside one day, abruptly kissed him on one cheek, and then walked off with a cheerful wave and a big smile. He'd been confused until Garcia had explained her friend's relief at what he was doing.

In the darkness of the room, listening to Reid breathe next to him, Derek realized he didn't deserve him. Look at what had done already tonight; he'd forgiven him for the unthinkable, something almost no one else would let go. He'd _comforted_ Morgan despite what he'd done, because Morgan was in pain. And he still wanted to help him, wanted to stay with him.

Reid was doing so much more than Morgan had a right to ask of him.

He was dirty. After what had been done to him, what he let that man do… Reid didn't deserve to have to settle for someone like him. He was smart, no, brilliant, cute from a certain viewpoint, and he had the potential to get so much more from life than just the brokenness Morgan could offer him. If only he'd fixed this…

Quietly as he knew how, Morgan slipped out of the bed they were sharing. Reid didn't even stir this time.

He needed to leave. Now, before he got Reid hurt. Further than he already was, that is.

He should never have let Buford get away with what he did, never have let Reid see yet another ugly truth hit too close to home, never have let Buford get so far under his skin that he would resort to attacking Reid, of all people. Buford had to pay, just like he always had. Morgan was only a danger to Reid and the doctor didn't need his darkness anyway.

He had to leave.

Out of habit, Derek knew exactly where he'd placed the clothes he'd removed last night; it was training ever since he started having to wake up at unholy hours to get going. He traded his night clothes for day, then patted around in his bag until he found the small notepad he usually kept in there.

Staring at it in the dim light from the window, pen in hand, Derek realized that anything he could say right now, knowing what he was going to do and what Reid was going to experience after it, wouldn't be enough to make it better. There was nothing that would make it better, period.

But he couldn't not do this.

Morgan scribbled a quick note, tore it out and placed in on the table, and was caught by the frowning look on Reid's face; that wasn't a usual look for him. Debating the safety of this, Derek bent and gently pressed his lips to the crease on Reid's forehead; it smoothed under his touch.

"I love you, Spence, so much more than I could ever tell you. And I'm sorry for what's going to happen but it's a fair trade, my life, for what it's worth, to take one more scumbag off the streets. You'll understand it eventually."

He hesitated a moment over Reid's phone, still lying silent and dead on the table next to him. They would call him when they found out. They'd wake Reid up and drag him into a nightmare if he turned that phone on; did he really want that?

Maybe it was fear of Reid's reaction if he didn't turn it on, maybe it was a suppressed desire to see the doctor one last time before he was taken to jail, he didn't know. Either way, he turned the phone back on before sneaking the keys out from under Reid's pillow where the doctor thought Morgan hadn't seen him hide them.

He opened the door, threw one last, longing look over his shoulder, stepped out, closed it, and was gone.


	12. Chapter 12

The ring of the cell phone startled Reid out of his semi-peaceful sleep. Fumbling for it, habit had him opening and answering before he realized he shouldn't, before he realized it shouldn't have been ringing in the first place.

"REID!" a voice bellowed in his ear. The doctor fairly flew out of the bed in shock, no longer even remotely asleep. "Where the hell are you? Where's Morgan?" Gideon yelled.

"Gideon, Gideon, stop, it's okay."

"No, no, it is not 'okay'! Do you have any idea how worried I've been, we've all been? The only reason I'm even talking to you now is a sheer whim to try to reach you, again, for the thousandth try! Why the hell was your phone off?"

Reid sat up in bed, running a hand through his hair. "Gideon, it's okay, honestly! We're fine. Derek's here-"

Only, when Reid turned around to assure himself of that fact, his heart jammed itself into his throat. He dropped the phone and scrambled up. "Derek? Derek, where are you?" he yelled, heedless of Gideon's yelling of his name through the forgotten phone.

The only other place to go was the bathroom, and it was pretty obvious, after a check, he wasn't there. He wouldn't have left to do anything innocent without telling Reid where he was going, not with what had happened earlier; he would've known Reid would panic if he woke to find him absent.

Derek was gone, he knew it as surely as he knew that E equaled MC squared. He also knew that something had to have happened, Derek had to have thought of something that would have prompted him to leave again without waking him. Well, the without waking him part made it pretty obvious that Derek hadn't meant a damn thing he'd promised earlier; he was going right back after Buford.

"Damn it!" Reid yelled, running for his go-bag and his clothes.

"Spencer Reid, you pick up this phone right NOW!" Gideon screamed into the phone apparently fed up with being ignored. Reid grabbed it, yelled, "Sorry, Gideon!" and slammed it shut, realizing he had doomed his career; there was no way that Hotch or especially Gideon could let this go now. But he was so far gone he didn't care. Derek was gone and, once again, Derek was the only thing that mattered; after what they had been through, before, tonight, whenever… They had to stay together, Reid had to stop him.

Again.

The phone rang and he ignored it while he speedily changed clothes.

It rang again as he searched for the key to the room.

It kept ringing and Reid kept ignoring it before snatching it up and finally turning it off again, but not before seeing that not only Gideon, but Hotch, JJ, and Garcia had tried calling. Garcia knew where he was by now; he had to move.

Fumbling for his glasses in the table by the bed, he froze when he saw the hand-scrawled letter; it only took a quick scan for him to read it.

_Spence,_

_ I'm sorry. You know that. But you don't deserve me; you need so much better than what I can give you. I'm damaged. He needs to be stopped. Find someone else, someone better, and let me go. You'll understand it eventually._

_Love you always,_

_D_

"I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! Dammit, Derek, why must you always do this?!" Reid whispered to the room at large before grabbing his phone and searching for the keys. Not finding them immediately, he groaned; Derek had obviously taken the SUV.

There was no way to tell how long ago Derek had left.

No way to tell if he was already there.

No way to know if Derek was now a murderer.

And he'd never get there in time.

Blinking back the burning tears, Reid flew out of the room, slamming the door behind him as he switched on the phone again, training finally kicking in.

When in trouble, get Hotch.


	13. Chapter 13

Red and blue lights lit the dark night, flashing dizzyingly off the surrounding buildings; what was usually a comforting scene for many had now become a nightmare for several.

Reid stood frozen by the side of a police car, just one among many, shocked numb by the truth that he had expected but never wanted to see. He couldn't move, didn't blink, could barely breathe. His chest hurt; there was something wrapped around his ribs and squeezing.

He heard the sound of the stretcher before it appeared. The doctor sat down hard where he stood, unable to stand any longer when the black bag containing the body of Carl Buford, former community leader, pedophile, and murderer, was wheeled out into the street and loaded into the back of the medical examiner's looming truck.

He stared as the doors were shut on the truth that Reid never wanted to know; stared as the truck started up and started moving off; kept staring long after it was gone.

"Reid?" the quiet voice dragged his head around; he looked up and up until the hazy, undefined shape of JJ's face came into view. He was numb, unthinking; he felt nothing. The concern on her face was shadowed by the pain in her eyes; but it bounced off him without registering.

"Oh, Spence," JJ whispered, her voice tortured at the desolate look in the eyes of the man she almost viewed as her younger brother. There was something broken in him, something she wasn't sure could ever be put back together, and if it could, she doubted it would be any of them he needed to do it.

The anger she'd had earlier when they left the station had drained away in the face of what had happened. Now there was only worry and pain. And betrayal. But she doubted what she was feeling could compare to what Reid felt. She knew better than most how close they were, as friends and as lovers.

"Reid!" Hotch called imperiously across the parking lot, exiting the youth center and striding across the asphalt. JJ took a small half-step in front of Reid, to shield him from Hotch; the assistant unit chief looked murderous.

And JJ nearly sobbed aloud at that reminder.

"Did you know this would happen?" he demanded, his voice so deadly soft as he looked down at the cowering doctor. "Reid!" Hotch barked when the doctor didn't reply; he flinched. "Did you know?!"

"Hotch…" JJ said hesitantly.

"No, JJ, we need to know!" Hotch replied angrily. "Now, Reid! Tell me what happened!"

JJ watched as tears started rolling down Spencer's drawn face, and yet he still made no reply.

"Coming through, let us out!" an imperious voice commanded. That evoked the first true reaction Reid had evidenced since he'd arrived, bailing out of the taxi he'd called to get him to the youth center and stumbling in on this mess.

His head jerked up like it was attached to a string and someone had yanked on it. He watched, a particular look of frozen terror on his face as Derek was marched out of the center, hands cuffed behind his back; the other profiler was looking at the ground, a different sort of blank look on his face.

But when Reid let out a sort of groaning moan, a sound JJ never wanted to hear from him ever again, his head jerked up like Reid's had, his eyes finding the young genius immediately as if he'd known where he was all along.

He mouthed a word JJ had no trouble distinguishing as "Reid" and his face twisted. He took one involuntary step in the doctor's direction, only to be yanked up short by Gordinski's vice-like grip on his arm. "Not gonna happen," the detective growled, pulling Derek away and roughly stuffing him in the back of a different black-and-white.

Through all of it, Reid and Derek's locked gazes never broke until the cop car drove off; Hotch and JJ were joined by Emily and Gideon as Reid dissolved into helpless, choking sobs that not even JJ's comforting could stop.


	14. Chapter 14

Dark eyes had watched the entire scene unfold from the small window above one of the equipment racks.

He knew the layout of the room as well as if it was his own room at home, knew that neither of the men he'd seen had seen him, which was exactly what he wanted. He had a camera, for what good it might do; it hadn't taken him long to find it, even stashed in his sister's messy room like it was. It was pink and shiny, nearly brand new, a gift from their parents for her graduation.

What it had witnessed was one of the darkest things humans could do to each other.

He didn't know why he'd chosen to go to the youth center. But after their talk… It had seemed like a good idea.

Darkness wasn't hard to find in the profiler's eyes; he couldn't become one of the bad guys. So he'd followed as best as he knew how, silent in Derek's shadow and waited, and was glad he did. The glint of the gun he hadn't seen before sparked this thoughts; he was about to run out and stop him when the other man appeared and chased after Derek when he ran, chased him away from the center. He'd waited and waited, and then seen them drive off in the SUV.

He didn't know why he stayed after that. There was no real reason, it was plain that one of Derek's co-workers had him in hand. But for some reason, he didn't leave. He stayed there, watching as Buford prepared for the night, obviously intending to sleep at the center again.

He watched the man get ready, turn out the lights, saw him bend his knees and pray to a God who should have struck him down where he knelt for his hypocrisy.

He watched Buford sleep and wondered what it might be like, doing what Derek had wanted to do.

He wondered what woke him after he dozed off, right there against the building; a noise in the dark, maybe, he would never know. His birthday watch told him it was past three in the morning. No one should be here, but someone was.

It only took a slight turn before he saw Derek enter the underground basement of the youth center, and then he turned fully around, bearing witness to what happened next. Shadows hid what Derek held in his outstretched hand, but he was no stranger to violence; it was easy to guess.

He held his breath, waiting for the explosion, wondered why it didn't come. Gasped when Buford awoke and jumped in surprise, then cowered in fear, hands raised pleadingly.

Coward, he snorted.

Derek motioned, and Buford shook his head. Derek motioned again, his mouth moving, and Buford stood this time, dressed in his ever-present sweat-clothes.

Buford's mouth was moving as Derek turned them so his back was facing the window, Derek at an angle to the door. His mouth moved, his hand still in shadow, and Buford shook his head slowly, making calming gestures with his hands. Derek's eyes glinted over-bright in a flash of light. His face twisted as he accused the man across from him for what he'd done.

At first, he resisted, denied he'd done any such thing; then Derek pointed his arm more firmly and the truth came splattering out in all its dark horror.

He watched as Derek's face went blank; there was no one home in that expression. He said one last final thing, Buford raised his hands, and then came the explosion he'd been waiting for all night long. As Buford dropped, he sighed, wondering how wrong it was for him to feel relief at the death of another human being.

But now, he wouldn't have to fear any more. It would be okay.

He waited for Derek to leave, to wipe the gun, drop it and leave.

He fidgeted, wondering why Derek didn't go, why he sat down in one of the plastic chairs and stared at the gun in his hands. What was he doing? He waited and waited, and waited and still Derek made no move to leave, to save himself.

Then it dawned on him that he wasn't going to leave. He was waiting there, waiting to be found, to be caught and punished for a crime that should have been excusable. He scrambled to his feet, ready to run in the building and chase Derek out, protect him as Derek had protected him.

But he was too late. The red and blue lights chased him back into the shadows and he could only wait, and watch, and think of what he could do to fix this.


	15. Chapter 15

"We need to know what happened, Spence," a soft voice said near his ear.

There were only two people in the world who called him Spence. Or was it one now? What would happen when Derek was no longer around to murmur his name like that, call him Pretty Boy and Genius and all the other terms Reid had once hated but now loved?

It was JJ sitting with him now, talking to him, or trying to, as the team sat gathered around a table in the police station, watching them. Watching him. He could feel Hotch's stern eyes on him, waiting for him to break and spill everything that had happened. He felt Emily's concerned, confused gaze, trying to make sense of what had happened. He felt JJ's hand warm on his arm, waiting for him to look up, acknowledge that they were all there waiting for him.

He felt Gideon's eyes, betrayed and angry that Reid hadn't asked for his help, hadn't told him what was going on.

The man closest to what he had for a father was disappointed in him. And it was almost the worst feeling he could thing of.

But what Derek had done… It trumped every other feeling he'd ever had. Anger, humiliation, sadness, loneliness, disappointment… The betrayal cut so deeply, to a place no one but him could see, could heal, and it was bleeding him to death. He could feel himself shutting down; he didn't want to care anymore.

Except these people kept demanding things of him, kept demanding he give them answers, relive these last hours. He didn't want to. He didn't want to remember Derek promising he'd never leave, because he had.

Crap.

Not thinking of it had turned to thinking and the tears started again, as silent and terrifying as the first time the team had seen them. No one knew what to do, because there was nothing but a staring blankness in Reid's eyes. JJ tried anyway, surrounding Reid's thin shoulders with her arms, trying to comfort him for all she was worth.

"Reid, come on, we need to know what happened last night. How are we supposed to protect Derek if you won't help us? You're the only one who knows what happened," Emily tried as JJ focused only on comforting the broken young man.

"Nothing," Reid whispered, the first word he'd spoken all night.

"Nothing? Nothing what, Reid? Nothing happened? Nothing as in you don't know, what?" Hotch demanded. Emily shot him a glare that would have melted metal at his interruption.

"Nothing left," Reid clarified in the same quiet voice.

"All right, enough!" Gideon said. "Prentiss, JJ, back up." JJ looked up and, not liking the look on the unit chief's face, hesitated; Prentiss finally had to draw her away. Gideon pulled up a chair in front of the doctor and sat down in it, leaning forward with Hotch at his back.

"Spencer, you need to talk. Now. We're running out of time and you're only making it worse. Either be useful, or we send you home," he said.

"I don't think-"

"We know you don't think it's a good idea, JJ, but Gideon's right. Reid's useless as he is and I don't have time to cosset him now," Hotch interrupted her.

Reid laughed. Everyone turned back to him, to watch him wear out his hysteria in a new way. That uncontrollable laughing was the second sound JJ never wanted to hear from him again; even Gideon got worried after a bit and tried to calm him down.

"I knew it!" Reid said triumphantly, eyes too wide as he stared around the room at them, the not-laughter finally stopping. "Derek always told me it wasn't true, but I knew I was always a burden to you guys! I told him." Gideon and Hotch traded a long glance.

"Reid, what happened last night when you left the station?" Hotch asked, suddenly much more gentle then he had been up to this point. Maybe he finally realized that Reid was on the wrong side of his sanity; pushing him any more right now was a dangerous idea. Reid instantly looked down at his hands again; they started the finger-twisting motions they'd been doing all night, it was a wonder he hadn't sprained something yet.

"Not my secret to tell," he muttered.

"Right now, Spencer, we don't have time for secrets, especially Derek's. If you want us to help him, and I know you do, we need to know what happened from the time you went running out of this station to when we arrived at the youth center," Gideon said in that urgent-yet-empathetic voice that made him so convincing to the UnSubs.

"He was abused," Reid said dully. He waited as the realization went around the room.

"Physically?" Gideon pressed; Reid laughed humorlessly.

"No, that was high school. I figured it out, Hotch, that's why I left. I knew where he was heading and probably what he was going to do. I had to stop him. He was walking right into the darkness," Reid said, almost talking to himself. For the moment, he was alone in the room; the rest of the team may as well have not existed.

The disjointed speech was throwing the team off-balance; Reid wasn't really making sense to anyone other than himself.

"Was he sexually abused, Reid?" Hotch asked, bringing Reid back to the present.

"Carl Buford," Reid said, nodding blankly and still talking as if to himself. "He did it. Did all this."

"And you knew Derek was going to…" Gideon said leadingly.

"Derek was going to kill him. Took my gun," he replied dutifully. "Need to get a new lock on the glove box in the SUV," he muttered to himself, nodding again.

"So he took your gun out of the SUV when he escaped?" Emily asked.

"Went to the youth center. Figured it out, went after him. Sorry, Hotch," he abruptly apologized. Hotch was thrown for the moment.

"Sorry for what, Reid?" he asked.

"Should've told you what happened. You keep telling me not to run off like that, I just keep doing it," he replied speculatively. "Why haven't you fired me yet?" he asked, suddenly realizing that that seemed wrong. He looked up, confused.

"Let's focus on that later," Gideon interrupted. "You got to the center…"

"Yes, I did," Reid replied.

Gideon closed his eyes for a moment as if asking for patience. "You got to the center. Was Derek there already?"

"He walked out into the road. I saw him while I was trying to decide. To go in the building or wait outside, I mean. I got out of the car, called his name… He knew it was me, and still he ran away," Reid said, his face clouding with pain. JJ moved to take his hand and felt the scratches on his palm; she turned it over to look at it.

"How did you get the scratches, Spence?" she asked quietly, studying the abrasions carefully. Reid winced, his hand rising to touch a spot on his head. "And the knot on your head?" she amended, carefully probing where his fingers had touched.

"Stupid trashcan," he muttered in disgust. "I was chasing him; didn't see that stupid trashcan until I ran into it. Lucky I did, though; he came back to check on me, make sure I was okay. Never would have caught him if I hadn't."

"So he came back; then what?" Emily asked.

"We… talked," Reid said, blushing faintly; they decided they didn't need details on that part. "I convinced him not to go, we got in the SUV, I took him to a hotel on the outskirts of the town. We got a room, went inside. He showered. I called Garcia," Reid said without thinking.

"You what?!" Hotch said; and angry Hotch was back again. Reid cringed and Gideon shot the younger man a look that made him back up a step reluctantly.

"You called Garcia?" Gideon repeated. Reid sighed and nodded; he'd already said it, might as well continue.

"It's not her fault, Hotch. I made her promise not to tell anyone where we were. I used her concern for him to get her to do it," he said, a disturbing amount of self-deprecation in his voice; Gideon thought he knew why. "We just needed time. I thought… I could help him. Deal with it. Thought I could fix it…"

"You tried talking to him about it?" Gideon clarified. Reid nodded. "What was said?" And Reid shook his head.

"Reid, you can't stop now, we've come this far," Gideon said, chided almost. Reid touched his head again, that same spot as before; then his other hand brushed his throat, like he was having a sensory memory. His eyes widened and his breathing sped up. JJ rubbed his shoulders soothingly.

"What happened, Spence?" she murmured encouragingly. His hand brushed his throat again.

"We… talked. Talked," he repeated, as if confused, a frown forming on his face. "Tried to talk," he said, then nodded; that was closer to the truth. "I pushed him when he didn't want to say. Shouldn't have done that," he laughed hoarsely.

"Did he… Spence, did Morgan hurt you?" To her credit, her voice only trembled slightly when she said this. Various things happened around the room; Hotch stiffened, his face thunderous; Gideon straightened, his face going smooth and blank as he hid what he was feeling; Emily let out a low hissing sound that sounded like a angry cat. JJ's hands tightened infinitesimally on the doctor's shoulders.

"Y-yeah," Reid said. "I'm okay. Hotch, no!" Reid yelped as the assistant unit chief whirled and stormed for the door, his intentions clear. He slid out from under JJ's hands, grabbing the ADA's arm.

"I'm okay, Hotch, nothing serious happened. Trust me, I know what I sound like, believe me I do but I'm not some abuse victim. This was the first time and I made him swear that he'd get help before we could think about being an us again; he promised, he did!"

"And yet it doesn't excuse what he did," Hotch said, still facing the door but looking at the doctor hanging onto his arm; if he tried hard enough, he could actually probably manage to hold Hotch in place. Reid stared at him for a moment, lips parted, eyes vacant.

"Not exactly relevant now, is it?" he said, returning to his seat. "M-murder trumps abuse," he stuttered over the word.

"You saw him murder Buford?" Gideon asked. Reid shook his head.

"I didn't know. Wait, no, yes I did. Didn't I?" Reid was starting to get confused, his mind unstable from the stress.

"Take a deep breath, Spence," JJ said. "Relax. We need you to think like only you can." Reid took a shaking breath, then another, his eyes closed as he tried to focus his mind; when he opened his eyes again, they were clearer, like someone was finally home again.

"Okay. I knew Derek wanted to hurt Buford, perhaps kill him. He had my gun. We went to the motel. Got the room. Showered, talked, tried to talk, resolved it, sort of, went to bed. That's the last time I remember seeing him. I woke up when you called," he said to Gideon, "and when I looked for him, he was gone. I dropped the phone, searched the room, found the note he left me."

"Note?" Emily asked.

"Not important," Reid dismissed.

"What did it say?" Gideon pressed. Reid straightened abruptly, eyes narrowing; they all remembered exactly how close he was to the edge, despite how much like himself he'd just sounded.

"I said it wasn't important. It's private and you don't need to know," he said stiffly.

"All right, all right," Gideon soothed, "let's move on. You found the note…"

"And I left. Called Hotch as I ran for the street. Got a taxi. Came here. Found-"

Blue and red lights flashing as he stumbled onto the scene. His heart stuttered and dropped; he reeled, unable to comprehend what might have happened. Searched frantically for Derek, hoping beyond hope that this was all for some different reason, that he was wrong, that he hadn't let Derek get to Buford, that he hadn't failed to keep his most precious person safe from himself.

_Should've called Hotch._

_Or Gideon._

_Should've called Hotch AND Gideon. Shouldn't have tried to do it yourself. You knew you weren't good enough. _

_Failure._

The ground rose up to meet him as gravity yanked him down again. JJ had found him there, on the sidewalk.

"Reid? Come on, Reid, now's not the time for flashbacks," Hotch said, shaking his shoulder gently. Reid blinked.

"So you never saw what Derek did?" Gideon asked. Reid shook his head slowly.

"No. He didn't want me to see what he was going to do."


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: Switching viewpoints a lot, hope it's not giving you trouble keeping up. You'll learn who this is in a bit; any guesses?

~Shadow

* * *

"Where's Derek?!" he yelled over the noise of the office, business continuing on as if nothing was wrong.

And maybe to them, nothing was. But to him, Derek was his older brother, the man who had truly protected him, shown him the difference between the director's meaning of protection and what it should actually be.

"Hey!" he shouted when no one looked up; his mother always said he had an impressive set of lungs and he used every ounce of them to get the attention of the cops in the room. Phone conversations paused, people looked up, and he recognized the man who'd stopped Derek before, who'd taken him away in the SUV.

"You!" he said in recognition, evading the hand about to land on his shoulder and darting to the man's side. "You were with Derek before! Where is he?" he demanded. He only got a confused look in reply.

"Look, kid-" a voice said behind him. He whirled, ducking the hand again, and came face to face with the cop Damien had said had arrested Derek in the beginning of all this. "I don't know what you're doing here, but-"

"Derek's innocent! You have to let him go!"

A pale, long-fingered hand shot out and grabbed his arm, holding it tightly; startled, he turned to face the man he'd seen before.

"Derek's innocent?" he whispered, hope and fear warring in his tone. Hope it was the truth. Fear that it wasn't.


	17. Chapter 17

Reid didn't realize he was holding the boy's arm until JJ reached out and gently replaced it with her hand. "Sorry," he muttered quickly. "What do you mean 'Derek's innocent'?"

The boy gave him a look like he'd lost his mind. "What do you think? I mean, you've got this all wrong! You need to let Derek go."

"Kid, who are you?" Gordinski said, his tone indicating he was well past patience with everything related to Derek. Trying for the third time to grab him, he nearly swore in frustration when the kid danced out from under his hand again, ending up behind Reid and in the middle of the rest of the team, who were watching the detective with various looks ranging from neutrality to hostility; he stopped trying to grab the boy after that.

"The name's James, Derek knows me! Where is he?!" James answered.

"James, Morgan's in a holding cell right now while we try to figure out what happened. You said you knew something about all this?" Emily said; the team was used to letting the women deal with kids and right now, JJ was preoccupied with trying to keep Reid together.

"I saw the whole thing!" James insisted, fairly dancing in place with agitation. Emily looked up at the detective.

"We're going to need an interview room," she said in her best neutral voice.

"The hell you are!" Gordinski blustered, seeing the oncoming headache as the BAU team tried to evade his authority again. "The kid's clearly not a reliable witness; what are you, twelve?"

"Fifteen, you as-"

"Morgan gets the benefit of the doubt just like every other criminal, detective Gordinski," Hotch interjected calmly before James could finish that sentence and land himself in jail as well. "It is not for you to decide whether or not this boy gets to tell what he saw. However, you or the other detective, officer Dennison, I believe, may be present during the interview if you so wish so you may see that we don't influence James in anyway."

"Damn straight I'll be in the interview!" Gordinski replied, seeing no way around it.

"And I'll be the interviewer from the BAU," Reid said, standing.

"Not going to happen, Reid. You're too personally involved," Hotch replied. That earned a confused look from the detective that Reid ignored.

"Gideon, then. It's not that I don't trust you, Hotch-"

"I get it, Reid, it's all right. Gideon?"

"Wouldn't one of the woman work better?" he replied in an undertone to the ADA. "I mean, two old white guys in the room with this poor kid?" He did that expressive shrug, leading Hotch to his conclusion. "Might not be the best-"

"No, it's all right," James interrupted, apparently shamelessly listening in on what was supposed to be a quiet conversation; the adults looked down in surprise to see he was nearly right next to them. How hadn't they heard him move? "If it's not him," he jerked a thumb at Reid, "and he specifically wants you to do it," he pointed at Gideon, "then I'm good with it."

"Why do you trust Reid's opinion? That's doctor Spencer Reid, by the way, I don't believe you knew his name. Or any of ours, for that matter," Hotch said. "But it can wait," he amended when Reid threw him a frustrated look.

"I trust him because he was protecting Derek, just like I was trying to do. Puts us on the same side, don't it?" James said, shrugging casually. Hotch raised an eyebrow.

"All right, then, lets get this started. Lead the way, detective," Gideon said.


	18. Chapter 18

"When did you first see Morgan?" Gideon asked, seated at the table across from James and trying to remember that his interviewee was a child. Gordinski loomed in a corner, having declined Gideon's request that he sit.

"It was earlier last night. Derek came found me out practicing drills for football; he knew what the director was doing, wanted to protect me," James said, obviously uncomfortable.

"What the director was doing? What did Morgan mean?" he asked.

James stopped and he looked up, confused disbelief on his face. "You don't know?" he said.

"Sorry," Gideon said, shaking his head.

"Some FBI you are! After all this, you _still _ don't know what he was doing to use? What exactly do think was Derek's reason for what he did tonight? Huh?" James asked aggressively, rising out of his chair. "Did you think he'd just lost his mind? Went off the deep end for no reason? What is wrong with you people?! How can you not know?"

"We don't know, kid. He won't talk and that boy out there isn't much help either," Gordinski finally spoke. "Now tell us what the hell happened."

"James," Gideon said with a quelling look at the detective, "James please come sit back down. We know Derek was upset by something, we just don't know what."

In the blink of that moment, the second after Gideon said he didn't know exactly what happened, James saw what he could do. He looked down, dragged his feet back to his chair and sat, twisting his hands in his lap and trying with whatever acting ability he had to make them think he was upset and close to tears.

"How could you not know? How could you have let someone like him keep doing what he did?" he muttered as if to himself.

"What did he do, James?" Gideon asked, leaning forward on the table.

"Carl Buford… abused me. He took advantage of me, and Derek said I'm not the first. He said Derek was one us, too, at one point. 'Used to be me,' he said."

"James, I'm sorry but I have to ask. What did Buford do to you?" Gideon asked, as though he already knew. Perhaps he did; his tone said he at least suspected. James revised his opinion; perhaps Morgan's team mates weren't as oblivious as he'd thought.

"Buford is a pedophile," James spat. "A filthy pedophile who takes advantage of the kids he's supposed to protect. And you as good as let him do it!" James yelled, shoving away from the table again. "So Derek did what you didn't! He protected me!" he yelled, banging himself on the chest with a fist. "Derek knew what he was doing to me. Knew that I was supposed to stay late at the center tonight so I could 'help' him." He snorted in disgust. "He knew as well as I did what that meant."

"My sister was paralyzed by a drive-by. My mom's alone, trying to support both us of. I'm the only one with a chance of getting us out of here. Buford promised me he'd see I got into college, near as promised it if I would only keep my mouth shut. If I didn't, he said he'd ruin any chance I ever had of getting out of here. If I just dealt with him, I could get a real education, get us out of the hellhole. To do that, I thought I would do anything, could withstand anything it took to save my family…"

There was silence. Then, "You're a liar." Gideon's head whipped around and James' snapped up, both of them focusing on the detective who was no longer in the corner. Seeing how close he'd gotten, Gideon stood as well, slowly.

"What did you say?" James yelled. "You think I wanna make up something like that? You have no idea the… the shame that comes with what he did! No clue! What is wrong with you people?!"

Gideon laid a comforting/restraining hand on James' shoulder as Gordinski began to speak again. "Carl Buford was an upstanding member of this community, kid. There's no way he'd do something like that," Gordinski blustered again. It was Derek who was in the wrong, Derek who was gonna pay for it; no kid was going to get in the way of his investigation.

"You want to bet?" a soft voice inserted into the conversation. Gideon turned, Gordinski jumped, and James whirled around with a cry of "Derek!"

The profiler in question stood in the doorway, Hotch a stern force behind him. He was a far cry from the man James was used to seeing; his shoulders were slumped, his eyes flicking between the floor and the eyes of the others in the room. He looked… defeated.

"James isn't lying, Gordinski. Neither am I. I let Buford get away with what he did, and that's my fault. But I'm speaking now, and so is James. And I bet you, once this gets out, we're not going to be the only ones."

"You have a bigger problem, detective," Hotch said firmly. "James told Morgan earlier that Damien knew what was going on, that he was trying to get James to stand up to him. Morgan's never had a motive for that boy's death, but Carl Buford certainly did."

"So the fact that the deceased is a murderer and a pedophile excuses what he did?" Gordinski snarled, pointing at Derek. "I don't think so. FBI or not, he killed a man in cold blood; that's premeditated murder!"

"Derek's not a killer! He was protecting himself!" James yelled into the silence that suddenly grew another few beats longer.


	19. Chapter 19

"Derek was what?" Reid whispered, watching everything from outside the tinted window.

"What, Reid?" Emily asked from beside him but he should his head, focusing more intently on the conversation.

"James, what did you say?" Gideon asked, turning the boy around to face him.

"Derek was protecting himself, protecting me!"

"James-" Morgan tried to interrupt, obviously confused.

"No, Derek!" James cut him off violently, whirling to face him and then back to Gideon. His words began to fly in a hard, low monotone. "I was there 'cause I had to be. Like I was saying, I was 'helping' him. Those nights… I don't get to leave the center. I always tell my mom it's a team party; he always wants- wanted me after our games. But when Derek found me, I told him. I told him what was going to happen and he promised he'd have my back. Then he left."

"But I've seen that look before, the one he had. He meant to do someone damage. But I couldn't let him do it, not and get in trouble. I went after him, trying to stop him. Doctor Reid out there," he said, jerking a thumb in the general direction of the rest of the station, "beat me to it. I got there as they were leaving."

"I went in, after that. I couldn't not go. He was still expecting me and the last time I didn't go, he called my mom, made her believe I was missing some important meeting. I couldn't tell her the truth! And this time, she'd be so scared if he told her I was missing. I had no choice. But I delayed as long as I could. I went, got in, 'h-helped' him," he had to pause and swallow hard before he could continue, "and then had to stay. But somewhere along the way, Derek must have remembered what was happening. He came back. I tried to get him to go, but he wouldn't! He said I was leaving with him, but first Buford was going to apologize for what he'd done."

"And you know what he did? He lied! He denied anything had ever happened! After everything he'd done to me, he wouldn't even admit it was wrong! Then he grabbed me and told Derek I wasn't leaving; he threw me into the corner and stepped toward Derek; Derek told him to stop but he didn't! He grabbed that stupid bat he always carries around when Rodney and his gang come through; Derek grabbed his gun, told him to stop, and he still kept going!"

Reid noticed that the boy was clenching and unclenching his fists. Derek was standing silent and stunned in the doorway, staring at James. Something wasn't sitting right; James was under a lot of stress, telling his story, talking to the police, but he wasn't looking to Derek, the man who he'd logically rely on for support. It wasn't adding up.

"He didn't have a choice, he was going to hit him with that bat! Derek told him to stop, to put it down, but he just swung at him; Derek got him on the other side of the room, shoved me toward the door; while he was distracted, Buford took a swing at him again, at his head. Nearly hit me," James said, miming where he would've been hit: right on the temple, a killing blow with enough force.

"He was too close to us, so close. Derek shot him, he had no choice; he couldn't protect me and himself at the same time. It was so loud," James said reminiscently, his hands rising to touch his ears. "It echoed everywhere. But he never had a choice! Buford wouldn't stop; he was going to kill Derek if Derek didn't stop him first. Probably would've killed me next, for telling. And you guys would have another body on your hands, just like he killed Damien," James whispered, the death of his friend hitting him again.

There was silence, both in and outside the room. This was a whole new aspect to the story they hadn't considered; they'd all thought Morgan had gone there to finish things with Buford. But James had an eyewitness account to something no one else alive but Derek had seen.

Reid didn't believe it.

Why was James so tense and not looking at Derek? What did Derek look so surprised but so resigned? Both of those things could be explained if either one had happened, not both. Gideon had noticed something as well; his eyes were going back and forth between the boy and the man, trying to understand the same thing that was making Reid uneasy.

"James, what are you doing?" Morgan nearly whispered, disbelief filling him up and stopping his protests. What he'd just said, all of it… it was a blatant lie!

"Telling the truth, Derek!" James yelled, finally turning to face him. A tear made a shining track on his cheek; he stared desperately at Morgan, trying to make him understand. And he did. The profiler saw that James was trying to protect him, trying to repay what he saw as a favor.

But Derek hadn't done it only for him; and no matter what Buford had done, Morgan had still taken a human life. He deserved his punishment.

"But it's not-"

"Let it go, Derek," James begged, stepping closer to the profiler. "It's over. You did what you had to do." And his eyes pleaded with Derek to let the lie stand, to just let it go.

Derek had to hand it to him, the kid was creative. The lie was solid, the only possible hole in it the one Derek could punch through it if he spoke up. It would stand if he only said nothing.

Just like he'd said nothing for over ten years.


	20. Chapter 20

Outside, with James' words, Reid put it all together, finally understanding. And had a split second to make his decision.

He turned and went for the interview room door. Tentatively, he tapped Hotch on the shoulder, halfway popping up behind him, a hesitant look on his face. For another second, he caught James' eye, locked and held his gaze, and gave just the barest of understanding nods.

"Hotch, James is upset. Shouldn't we stop this? We're not even supposed to be questioning underage suspects without parental observation. I-I mean, he's not a suspect but still, is this legal?" he stammered, desperately trying to think of a way to break up the audience so he could talk to Derek alone.

"Reid's right," Hotch said, "James, don't say anything else. We shouldn't have even been talking to you without your mother present."

"But I wanted to!" he protested.

"I know," and there was a brief, grateful smile on his stoic face, "and believe me, we're all grateful. But we need you to repeat all of this when your mother's here; it's what the law demands."

"In front of my mom?" he whispered, suddenly horrified. Reid stepped quickly around his boss and went to him before Derek could.

"It'll be all right, James," he said. "Buford's gone now, he can't hurt you again. He can't touch you for telling people what happened. I know moms, James; if your mom is anything like mine, she'd want to know. She might be upset you didn't tell her, but it's only because she's worried about you. And if you need us, we'll be right here while you do it," he promised, offering the kid the only guarantee of support he could.

"It'll be okay," he reassured, trying to tell the boy without words that he'd take care of Derek.

He hesitated another minute, looking over Reid's shoulder at Derek; Reid half-turned to see an undecipherable look twisting Derek's face. "Okay," he breathed. "I can do it."

Reid nodded once and walked back to Hotch. "I need to talk to Der- Morgan. Please, Hotch," Reid murmured. Derek half-turned to look at him; Reid ignored him, focusing his entire being on his boss. Hotch hesitated, then nodded curtly.

"Do not run off again, Morgan," Hotch warned softly but no less vehemently for all the softness.

"Got it, Hotch," Morgan replied in the same volume before Reid all but dragged him from the room.

The door behind them closed on Hotch trying to reassure Gordinski that Morgan wasn't a flight risk as Reid hurried them both outside, to the only bit of privacy they might get.


	21. Chapter 21

Derek Morgan hated himself. He'd had his chance to speak up and tell the truth about what had happened, contradict the lies James was saying to protect him.

And he'd held his tongue. Again.

Just like the last time.

And now Reid was chasing them both out the door, no doubt to ream him out for what he'd just done.

"Reid," he started when they were outside, standing on the far side of the police station parking lot, as far from the actual station as they could get.

"Don't, Derek," Reid said, holding up a staying hand. "Don't contradict what James is saying. Just let it lie. The child's brilliant, his story air-tight so long as you don't say anything!"

Derek's mouth fell open. Reid, honest, child-like Reid was on James' side, wanted him to just let the lie slide?

"Are you insane?" he yelped. "What the hell are you talking about? How am I just supposed to let this go, to let James _lie_ for me?"

Reid stepped toward him quickly, an uncharacteristically angry look on his face; Derek was brought up short.

"Keep your voice down," the doctor ordered. "James is doing this for you because he saw what happened. Carl Buford," Reid stopped, noticing how Morgan flinched. He reached out and laid a gentle hand on Morgan's shoulder and tried not to be hurt when the other profiler shrugged it off.

"Carl Buford was an evil man. I am not condoning what you did, Derek, far from it; I hope it haunts your nightmares for a long time. But if there was anyone who deserved to die, he was it. Pedophile, child murderer… We are not a judge, jury, and executioner and may we never come to that but, dammit, Derek, you do not deserve to go to jail for the rest of your life for killing someone like him!"

"This is not entirely out of your welfare, either," Reid said, his brown eyes dark with the force of his emotions. "I don't deserve to have you leave me, do I? I may be wrong, but I didn't think I did. No, I deserve to have you wake me up every night with those aforementioned nightmares, deserve to be able to comfort you through them, deserve the chance to stay with you for however long it may be that we stay together! What part of 'I don't want you to leave' don't you understand?!"

"Reid-"

"I don't know how to make this clearer to you, Derek!" Reid said in obvious frustration. "How do I get you to see that I need you here by me for as long as possible? How do I get you to stay? You promised me you would, and then you up and left in the middle of the night! You left me this worthless, useless note and that's it! If you love me, why did you leave? And why the hell did you think I would understand this?" he said with an expansive gesture to encompass all that had happened.

Morgan blew out a huge breath, running his hands over his face again before looking up to meet Reid's tortured eyes. He felt trapped, hemmed in on all sides by the pressures and expectations, the lies and the half-truths.

"Reid. No, Spencer, I need you to listen to me. Can we sit, please?" Morgan asked, gesturing to the curb; Reid nodded and led the way. He settled himself awkwardly on the cement, leaving a noticeable amount of space between himself and Morgan.

"You can't even bear to sit near me," Morgan said bitterly, unable to stop himself.

"Just being careful. You've already hurt me physically and emotionally tonight, Derek; want to take a shot at making it three out of three?" he returned, an answering bitterness in his voice.

Derek winced. "Guess I deserved that. But my intention was never to hurt you, Spencer."

"And yet, you have," he replied.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"You don't mean that," Reid said. "I'm not sure you remember the meaning of those words."

Morgan stifled a yell of frustration. "What do you want from me, Spencer?! What can I possibly give you to make this better, how do I make this up to you?!"

"I don't know what I want anymore," Reid whispered, sounding tortured. "More honestly, I don't know if I would trust whatever you promised me." He brushed his hands quickly over his eyes, wiping off the threatening tears. "I love you, Derek! I do. I messed up; I shouldn't have tried to help you on my own, I know I'm not good enough. I should've called Hotch or Gideon or someone, told someone what was going on! And now look what I've let you do; you've killed someone, because I wasn't good enough to stop you, and now I'm telling you to let a child lie for you to get you out of it. What the hell am I doing?! Who have I become?" He buried his face in his hands, obviously trying to stop the sobs that were choking him.

"Spencer, you 'let me' do nothing. We both know you couldn't stop me if I really wanted to go somewhere, and you did what you thought was best, trying to protect me. And I thank you for it, more than I can possibly say, and it has nothing to do with the fact that I ended up getting what I wanted from the beginning. I'm sorry for the pain I caused you. Y'know, right now, I don't even remember why I didn't wake you to talk about leaving again. I know that sounds horrible, but… Have you ever just woken up in the early hours of the morning and everything just seems too terrible to deal with anymore? I wasn't thinking clearly, I was just reacting. The memories, they were in my head and I couldn't make them stop! I knew that James was going through the same thing I had and I couldn't let him have to survive that, I couldn't!" he begged Spencer to understand.

"You're right, Spencer, Carl Buford deserved to die, you already knew I felt that way. But I deserve to be punished for it!" he said, trying to catch Reid's eyes; the doctor avoided meeting his gaze.

"I. Am. A. Murderer. I'm no better than what he was. I cleared the streets of another criminal, and a bad one at that, but murder is against the law no matter what the cause. And that note I left for you? I'm damaged, Spencer, I have been for a long time. Now I've only made it worse. You deserve better than anything I could give you, and you deserve the chance to find it." Spencer sat frozen, immobilized by his pain as Derek said, for the second time that night, the very words he didn't want to hear.

"So I'm leaving you, Spence. I'm going to turn myself if, like I should, and be punished for what I did. And you, Pretty Boy, are going to move on to better things, like you're supposed to." He stood, brushing himself off.

He took two steps back toward the station before he felt a hand clench the fabric of his pants; he stopped and looked down to see Reid looking back up at him, his face streaked with tears. He said nothing, but he didn't have to; the look on his face was heartbreaking.

"I'm sorry, Spence," Derek whispered. Giving in to what they both wanted, just for a moment, Morgan bent and pressed his lips firmly to Reid's, taking comfort in the fact that Reid, however he felt right now, was kissing him back. Then he pulled away, fighting the need to go back and pull Reid into his arms and comfort the younger man until all the tears stopped.

He fought the need tooth and nail, won, and walked back into the station as Reid watched him, despair gluing his eyes to his former lover's back but freezing his voice and his body, keeping him from even whimpering as Derek left him forever.


	22. Chapter 22

Reid sat on the cold cement, seeing and hearing things and making no sense of them.

Everything was a blurred haze of simply existing; the only thing he had room to acknowledge was the betrayal, the loneliness. Even after everything he'd said, Derek had merely walked away. He hadn't cared that Reid needed him. He hadn't cared that he was going to fall apart without him. He simply hadn't cared.

That hurt worse than anything else that had happened tonight, and he'd thought that that would be impossible.

For no reason he could immediately determine, the doctor stumbled to his feet; he stood there for a moment, wavering uncertainly and unsure of why he'd risen.

Then he walked mechanically back to one of the SUVs and stood there, looking in the window. His gun was once more in the lockbox. The key was in his pocket.

It would be so easy. So much easier than this, this loss, this emptiness.

"Spence?"

Hearing the soft voice say his name, Reid made his head turn in the direction it came from.

JJ was standing next to the front of the vehicle, looking at him in concern; something she saw in his face made the concern change to worry. "Spence, what's wrong?" she asked, coming forward to stand beside him, a delicate hand on his arm. "I got worried when I saw Morgan come back in without you. Are you okay?"

Reid couldn't figure out what to say. He wanted to tell her everything: the truth, what James was doing, what Morgan had done. Her face, so open and caring, almost made him spill the entire sick story to her, tempted him to. But shouldn't he be stronger than that? He shouldn't act like the boy the team saw him as; he was a man, he could handle this on his own.

His eyes slid to the lockbox again; JJ saw it and followed his gaze. "We know he got your gun from you, Spence, but it's okay, it's back where it belongs," she said, misinterpreting his look. "Of course, the other box is useless until we get a new lock but it's still all right. Come on, come back inside. It's too cold out here."

_It's cold everywhere,_ Reid wanted to say to her.

But he allowed her to lead him docilely back inside. "I know you're worried about him, Spence, but it'll be okay. I'm sorry that James had to see what he did, but I'm glad he was there; he's the only thing keeping Morgan out of jail right now."

_That'll change_, he thought miserably. He apparently hadn't told them yet, but he would. He would.

"JJ, can you take me back to the hotel? I'm not feeling well," Reid murmured, just needing to be away, to be alone. To not be here when Morgan condemned himself. JJ looked at him in startlement.

"Let me just go tell Hotch; I'm sure he'll say it's okay. Just sit there," she indicated, clearly confused as to why he wouldn't want to stay near Morgan but just as clearly unwilling to ask if he didn't volunteer the information. He nodded and sat obediently and immediately spaced out again while JJ went to find Hotch.

Morgan was nowhere in the immediate view, which was a good thing; Reid didn't think he could stand it right now. He wasn't up to acting that well. Maybe tomorrow he could do better but right now, he just wanted to sleep and forget the world for as long as possible. Maybe tomorrow this would seem better, make more sense. Maybe then he could understand what was going on.

And if not, there was always the other option.

He was still staring off when JJ returned; the sound of her voice near his shoulder made him jump in surprise. He hadn't even registered she was back. She frowned in concern again.

"You look awful, Spence. This has really put a lot of stress on you, hasn't it?" she said sympathetically. He nodded woodenly, not even really registering what he was agreeing to.

"Come on then, let's go back to the hotel. The others will come back later after everything's sorted out." Reid stood and followed her stiffly as she moved out.

He fumbled the door and nearly dropped it on himself, had enough difficulty with the car door that JJ reached over from the inside and opened it for him, and only barely got the seatbelt on right. His brain felt covered in fuzz and filled with static; every motion, every thought was twenty times harder than it should have been. JJ was gazing at him in concern again; he turned away and curled up, pretending to sleep when all he did was stare sightlessly out the window.

On moment they were driving off from the station, the next they were at the hotel. Reid had lost track of the miles, of the time between the two places; it simply wasn't in his head, like it had never existed.

Still stuck in his own mind, in the end it was only JJ's continued worried help that got Reid safely into the hotel and up to his assigned room. He thanked her and pulled up a smile from somewhere that he didn't know he had that somehow convinced her to leave him to his own devices after that.

He didn't remember to lock the door after she left.

He didn't care to turn the light on.

He had no clothes here, nothing of his belongings; everything was still at the motel. He stripped off his clothes with motions born of habit, pulled on the complementary bathrobe, and fell onto the bed. He didn't bother with the sheets.

Despite the fuzz and the static, his thoughts were still there, trickling slowly through his awareness with agonizing detail. He relived the last night with perfect recall and could only lie there numbly on the bed, wishing it would stop.

Wishing he'd made a better choice.

Wishing he'd called someone.

Wishing he'd been smart enough to see the signs.

Wishing Derek hadn't touched him.

Wishing he'd woken up.

Wishing he'd been there in time.

Wishing he could take it all back.

Wishing it would all make sense.

Desperately wishing Derek was in the bed next to him.

It was a long, long time before Reid could sleep that night.


	23. Chapter 23

"Hotch, we need to talk," Morgan said quietly from next to his superior's elbow. Hotch turned his head to look at him, curious at the tone in his voice. Whatever he saw in Morgan's face made him lead the other agent into an empty office space filled with boxes; a despairing number of them were marked 'OPEN'.

Hotch wondered how many of them would ever be closed, how many would find their way to some lawyer's desk one day, the desk he'd vacated to do this job.

Compared to Reid, Hotch wasn't brilliant, but he wasn't exactly dull, either. Gideon and Reid hadn't been the only ones in realizing that something was wrong during James' interview; Morgan's reactions had sat even more uncomfortably with him, especially after the scene in the interview room earlier when Morgan had all but attacked Hotch for getting too close to the truth.

Morgan had always been the angriest of the team, the one most likely to solve things by yelling and force. Granted, he almost never stepped out of line on the job and when he did, the others all were more than understanding, if not wishing they'd done it themselves, but something like this, so personal… The likelihood of Morgan handling this rationally, without violence, simply wasn't very high.

So when Reid had finally put the pieces together for them and James had stepped forward with his side of the story, Hotch was just as surprised as everyone else.

He'd thought that Reid had been helping. It wasn't a very well kept secret that the two were together, but neither had anyone ever actually said the fact aloud. Basically, the entire team knew, but no one spoke of it.

Hotch, though, had thought that Reid was having a noticeable effect on the other profiler; Derek was calmer at work, more focused and less likely to go charging off into situations he thought he could handle without back-up. It was a welcome relief to the supervising officer, a.k.a Hotch, who hadn't gone longer than two weeks without needing to fill out paperwork since Morgan had joined the team way back when.

Helped until now, that is.

"Hotch-"

"Derek," Hotch interrupted. "James. How much of the truth is he bending?"

"You know?" Morgan asked, not really surprised, more resigned.

"I know you. It wasn't hard to piece together."

Suddenly unsure, Morgan's face clouded. "What do I do, Hotch?"

Hotch sighed and looked away, presenting Morgan with the stern profile of his face. "Reid tried to talk to you, didn't he? Outside just now."

"Yeah."

"What did he say?"

"He obviously wants me to stay. Did he tell you what happened last night?" Morgan asked.

"Which part of it?" Hotch said sarcastically. "It's rather hard to tell, given how much went on."

"The part where I hurt him," Morgan returned harshly, eyes and anger turned inward at himself. It shouldn't have been possible but Hotch's already dark face darkened further.

"Yes, he told us," Hotch bit out, voice clipped with the reminder of what had gotten him so angry earlier. "You're lucky Reid stepped in for you or you'd be sporting a black eye right now. And as a related note, avoid JJ for a while. And Jason. I might've punched you, but I think Jason is going to shoot you." It was a testament to the threat that Hotch's voice sounded as serious at Morgan had ever heard him.

"And I might let him; I certainly deserve it. I can't let James lie for me, Hotch. I want to turn myself in," Morgan said, looking down at the ground.

"Reid's okay with that?" Hotch said, surprised into allowing the change of topic.

"Of course not. But it's not really his choice."

"He deserves to at least have you consider his opinions on the matter."

"Wait, Hotch, wait. Are you seriously telling me to consider letting the kid lie for me, to keep me out of jail?" Morgan said incredulously. "What the hell is wrong with all of you? First him and now you, telling me to let a boy lie to save my sorry ass! We are law enforcement, the best of it! We are not supposed to be literally getting away with murder!"

"Morgan, keep your voice down," Hotch ordered. Morgan clenched his teeth so hard Hotch expected to hear them crack. "Listen. How did Reid justify this?"

"He gave me some bullcrap about the murder being less a sin because of who I killed. Buford was a pedophile, and a murderer, but that did not make his life any less of a life, his potential any less important," Morgan said. Hotch sighed again, already nodding before Morgan had finished.

"I might've guessed you were thinking that way; let me tell you, it's a relief to hear you still know it's wrong."

"Then why the hell are you telling me to let James lie?" Morgan hissed, completely confused by Hotch's apparent two-faced opinions.

"I can see both sides, Morgan, your and ours. When murder becomes less disturbing, less atrocious, it's time to take a break from the team but you haven't reached that point yet. If you were any less tormented by what you'd done, I have you in jail myself before you could blink. But you're not. You're hating what you did, regretting it; your conscience won't let you lie. I will never hear this repeated, but Buford deserved what he got."

"Dammit, Hotch, don't do this!" Morgan said, feeling his resolve crumbling. He wanted to confess, he needed to; what he'd done was wrong, so wrong, against the law and against God, as much as he didn't want to believe in the Lord anymore. But first Reid and now Hotch was telling him to stay silent, to let James have his way.

In some ways, he'd been counting on having Hotch validate his guilt, thus convincing him that he truly deserved to go to jail. No matter what Hotch thought otherwise, Morgan did value the older man's opinion and he needed his guidance now more than ever.

"The fact that Buford was what he was is not the only justification I have for my opinion about this, Derek. From my view, I have to wonder, of what use are you going to be in jail?"

"What?" Morgan asked, not seeing where he was going with this.

"Weigh the situations. Option A, you go to trial, maybe go to jail quite possibly for the rest of your life. Even if you're found innocent, you've already lost your job and you won't be able to get another one, laws against discrimination or not. Sure, you being incarcerated follows the letter of the law and it might help to assuage your guilt in time, but in the end, what real good have you done? Have you helped other people? Have you bettered the rest of the world in some way? Or have you merely gone to jail and sat there only to help yourself feel better?"

"Then there's Option B," Hotch continued without letting Morgan get a word in. "You stay out of jail but you are in no way a free man. You remain chained by your conscience and you work like hell to make amends by continuing to do what you are good at now; you stay a profiler and you help protect the rest of humanity. You stop killers, serial killers; you save lives, in the end, and even then it may not be enough. I hope it will never be enough. I hope you won't ever forgive yourself for what you've done here tonight, that you won't ever forget, but at least in the meantime you will be doing something to tip the balance more toward our side."

"It's not the comfortable choice, nor is it the easy one, but it is the one that does the most good and for that we need all the help we can get," he reminded Derek of the reason the other man had originally joined the BAU.

While Morgan stood there, flabbergasted at what had to be the longest bunch of sentences he'd ever heard Hotch string together all at one time, Hotch used the time to say his final piece.

"You are a good man, Derek, one of the good guys, despite what has happened here tonight. Even when you go about as bad as a human can go, you still haven't fallen as far as most of the rest of the people who've murdered someone; Buford didn't deserve to die, but he didn't deserve to keep doing what he was doing, either. You took out a bad man, a guilty man, and there is a whole world of difference between doing that and killing for pleasure like the people we try to catch."

"I hope that you choose Option B but I cannot make the decision for you. I hope that I see you on the plane tomorrow, but I can't order that from you. I can't do anything but offer you my opinion, remind you that Reid gave you his opinion as well, and hope you think them over with all the deliberation they deserve," Hotch said, laying a hand on the other man's shoulder as he passed.

"Wheels go up at ten tomorrow morning. If you're not there by then, I will assume you've made your choice, and I will understand," he said from the doorway. "Goodbye, Derek."

Silence started, stretched, and broke as Morgan tried to restart his brain after the departure of his teammate, still too surprised by Hotch's behavior to think properly. "We really are insane. He's wrong. Reid's wrong. Why can't they see what I have to do?" he whispered finally before walking out into the rest of the precinct to find Gordinski.


	24. Chapter 24

When muffled banging on the room door awoke Reid the next morning, he peeled his bleary eyes open to stare blankly at the ceiling.

The banging continued, punctuated by soft calls of 'Reid' and 'Spencer' but he didn't rise to answer the door. What was the point? He wasn't any use to the team, they'd as much as admitted it last night, and with Derek gone-

Derek was gone.

With a groan of pain both physical and emotional, Reid dragged himself out of the bed and into the bathroom, punishing his thoughts by splashing cold water on his face.

Why couldn't the team just leave him here? It wasn't like he was going to be of any use to them anyway; no doubt he was going to be suspended until they got the mess with his firearm cleared up. He could use the couple weeks it would take, just stay here in the hotel and recuperate. Take a long, slow drive back to Quantico.

Hell, maybe he should just quit now and be done with it. Surely Hotch would understand.

"Spence?" JJ's voice floated through the halfway-open room door. "Where are you?" There was a threatening panic in her voice until Reid coughed, cleared his throat, and replied, "In here."

He sagged down onto the toilet, too weary to move, as JJ's blonde head appeared in the bathroom doorway, looking in quickly like she was ready to jump back out again if he was indecent. Covered from neck to foot in the robe he'd somehow managed to get on last night, he looked like a child wearing his father's clothes, parts of him getting lost in the too-big clothing. JJ wasn't unaffected by it.

"Spence, what are you doing, we've got to leave," JJ scolded mildly, walking fully into the bathroom.

"I was thinking of taking some time off. You know, clear my head. Maybe stay here for a couple days and drive back instead of taking the jet," Reid said, half-heartedly trying to inject some kind of tone into his voice.

JJ clearly didn't buy it. Walking to his side, she dropped to one knee, laying a comforting hand on his dangling arm. Reid had accepted her touch long ago; he didn't shy away from it like he once would have.

"I don't think that's a good idea, leaving you here by yourself. I don't think Hotch will go for it either, and Gideon would have his head if he did. I'm sorry Spence, but I don't think you have much of a choice here," JJ said sympathetically.

"Come on, we need to get you dressed before they come in here and drag you out, hotel robe or not." She stood again, holding out her hand to him; he regarded it with a look that JJ couldn't decipher. All she saw was the reluctance with which Reid finally reached out to take her hand; she knew then that her little brother was in a darker place than she'd thought he was, and she had no idea what to do.

In a sad continuance of last night and without any better ideas, JJ helped him stand, got him out into the room, picked out clothes, and politely turned away to pack for him as she dressed.

Throughout it all, Reid never said another word, never lost that distant, vulnerable look on his face that made her want to protect him all the more. Without time for breakfast, she hustled them both out the hotel doors, depositing her key, Reid's own key, and the key she'd charmed from the management in order to get into Reid's room on the check-in counter before they left for the garage.

She had to guide Reid through the elevator, press all the buttons, and practically tow Reid along to the car like a reluctant child. No, not really reluctant, she realized. It was more like Reid just wasn't there; his mind, his focus was somewhere long distant from here and the real world had just stopped making an impression on him.

"-kill him myself," they both heard Gideon saying as they walked up to find the other two men standing next to one of the vehicles. The conversation, whatever it had been about although JJ thought it was pretty obvious, abruptly stopped when they caught sight of Reid; Hotch retained his usual stoic look but Gideon wavered dangerously between concern and an anger terrific to behold. It was enough even to crack that neutral façade he kept on so well; JJ shot a look a Reid to see how he would react.

Although staring straight at his father-mentor, the doctor seemed to take no notice of his struggle, a strange blank look on his face; Gideon went from angry to apoplectic.

"Let's load up," Hotch said before Gideon could figure out what to say or do next. JJ was fairly sure it would have involved more yell-whispering like he'd been doing when the walked up; that and some fairly creative torture on a certain questionable agent if he could get his hands on him.

"Jason, you're driving the other car with Emily, JJ and Reid are with me." Gideon looked around at that, clearly about to argue the situation; Hotch's expression made it clear that it would be a useless attempt. The words died before they started and Gideon walked off to the other SUV, scowling deeply enough to evidence every line in his considerably aged face. JJ spared a moment of pity for Emily and hoped her thick skin was as tough as it looked.

"Get him into the car, please, JJ," Hotch spoke quietly to her, seeming to realize that Reid was no good on his own.

He took their bags and loaded them into the back as JJ urged Reid into the backseat and tried to get him to buckle his seatbelt without success; finally, she went around the other side and climbed in next to him, doing up both their belts before settling in next to her little brother, trying to let him know without words that she was there without being too overbearing.

He didn't react at all when she took his hand again and she tried very hard to suppress the panic that rose from that simple lack of response. She almost succeeded.

Reid stared only out the window, his mind a million miles away; he felt JJ's touch but didn't connect the reason for it, saw Hotch's frequent glances in the rearview mirror but didn't understand his worry. It was like after his last hope of avoiding the team had been dragged down and summarily destroyed, he'd gone back on autopilot. Everything felt fuzzy again like it had last night; after the little amount of sleep he'd actually gotten, he was content to let it be so. He knew that otherwise he wouldn't be able to stop himself from thinking.

The miles to the airport passed while he stayed in his comatose state; when Hotch slowed and parked the rented SUV, then shut off the engine, Reid looked up in mild surprise.

"Time to go, Spence," JJ said, unbuckling him. Freed, he reached automatically for the door handle and let himself out, not noticing JJ's hopeful look, a look that turned again to disappointment when Spencer merely stood on the tarmac outside, staring blankly at the jet in front of him, not even shutting the door behind himself.

She sighed and helped Hotch carry the bags, pushing Reid gently to get him started walking in the right direction. When he veered off distractedly, Gideon appeared from nowhere and planted a hand between his shoulder-blades, again steering him in the appropriate direction; JJ was grateful for the help, burdened as she was with both her own and the bag of Reid's Hotch didn't have a hand for.

Emily had joined them and they were standing at the foot of the extended stairs when someone yelled "Agents!" from behind them; JJ barely heard it over the distant roar of the other planes. Reid appeared not to hear it at all, continuing up the stairs even without Gideon's prompting.

Sighing, she started after but Hotch stopped her. "He'll be safe in there, let him be," he told her before they all, minus two, turned to face the man hurrying in their direction.

As that thought occurred to her, JJ wondered how she hadn't noticed before. "Hotch, where's Morgan?" she asked.


	25. Chapter 25

A/N: I know it's a lot of chapters but I promised ASAP, didn't I? And honestly, is anyone really disappointed?

~Shadow

* * *

Seeing his familiar couch on the side of the plane, Reid gratefully dropped onto it, curling up instantly and ready for more sleep again.

_Here's hope it actually comes this time_, he thought sardonically.

It hadn't escaped his notice that Morgan was nowhere to be found. He hadn't really expected him to come after all; Morgan had made his intentions very clear last night and when he said he'd do something, he stuck to it. Usually. Most of the time.

"Except where it involves me," Reid whispered bitterly, breaking the humming silence surrounding him. It was then that he noticed that the others hadn't followed him up the stairs. He sighed and frowned in confusion; why did nothing work like it used to any more?

It took a lot more effort than it should have for him to right himself and then stand up; where was JJ? He needed her to help him, everything was so much harder on his own.

He shuffled slowly to the entrance to the plane, intending to ask what was taking everyone so long. What he saw coming up the gangplank had him moving backwards into the plane much faster than he'd been trying to leave it.

"Spence, be careful."

Reid tripped right then and only by a miracle and some interesting assistance by gravity did he manage to land back on the couch he'd so recently vacated. Between one second and the next, he'd switched from catatonic to hyperawareness, heart pounding, eyes wide enough to swallow half his face.

"Wh-What… What…" was all he could get out; the rest of the sentence was ensnared in his whirling thoughts and couldn't get out of his mouth.

Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan set his bags down slowly on one of the chairs around the little table, his eyes never leaving Reid's face. "It's all right, Reid."

"No, it's not!" Reid nearly yelled. "Don't you dare say that to me!"

Morgan winced. "Okay, yeah, that was a stupid thing to say," he agreed. Still moving slowly, he slid to another of the chairs and sat in it, swiveling it to face him again.

Reid's eyes flicked restlessly to the doorway and back to Morgan, doorway, Morgan, doorway, Morgan.

"It's all-" he started, then clamped his teeth together to stop the platitude. "Everyone's outside, Spencer, right at the bottom of the stairs. They thought we could use so privacy, just for a little while."

"There's nothing that needs to be said!" Reid spat back with enough vehemence that Morgan actually sat back a little. "And how did you get past Gideon?" Reid asked suspiciously, eyes narrowed.

Morgan gave a deep chuckle that lasted for only a moment. "Sheer luck. He left his book in one of the SUVs and went back for it. JJ was another thing entirely," he said, looking dubiously impressed for a moment. "She said that if she sees one tear on your face when she comes in here or hears one loud word from you, she's going to castrate me. Emily looked like she approved. What did I tell you about those middle-aged women, huh? Completely protective of you," he said fondly.

The cadences of Morgan's speech were soothing after the long night Reid had spent wishing he could hear Morgan's voice; between the lack of sleep and the desire for comfort, Reid was having trouble remembering why he was angry. He stared in fascination as Morgan's mouth moved, feeling that same security-induced lassitude beginning to lull him into complacence.

Truthfully, he'd never been angry at Morgan before for this long of a time; he always ended up giving in or forgetting what he'd been upset about in the first place.

"He apologized yet?" JJ said aggressively, stepping into the plane and snapping Reid from his lull.

"Obviously not," Emily snorted from behind her, seeing Morgan posed comfortably in the chair; Morgan unconsciously leaned a little away from the two women.

"I'm not surprised," Gideon snarled, stomping irritably in behind them and nearly boring holes into Morgan with his gaze; this time Morgan's hands clenched on the arms of the chair like he was fighting the urge to stand up. His chin started to go up defiantly, eyes sparking a challenge that Gideon stepped forward to answer; then his eyes slid to Reid sitting so silent and dejected in the corner of the plane, as far from everyone as he could get.

Morgan sighed in a sudden similar dejection, all the fight leaving him, shoulders slumped and head bowed in acceptance of his guilt.

After a fruitless moment of willing Reid to look up, Gideon made a contemptuous noise as Morgan walked by him to take another seat at the front of the plane, allowing everyone else to take the seats closer together, willingly exiling himself. Hotch, entering at that moment, visibly refrained himself from chastising his team, all of them, for their conduct; he stowed his things and took the chair Morgan had just vacated, leaving JJ once again by Reid, Gideon across the walkway staring at him, and Emily across the table from Hotch, alternately watching Reid and looking through a file.

As soon as the plane took off, everyone pretended Morgan didn't exist. The usually talkative agent accepted their punishment silently, staring dejectedly out the window with no real interest, and no real hope that things would improve. They all knew what he'd done despite the fact they were letting James tell his lies; they didn't want him in jail and yet neither could they accept what he'd done. It was a rather cruel stalemate that was playing out on him.

Morgan pondered over the options Hotch had presented to him one more time in the long list of times he'd already gone over them and couldn't honestly say which one he preferred; if this was what the coming months were to be like, it was starting to look like he'd made a mistake in leaving Chicago.


	26. Chapter 26

"Pretty boy? What's got you thinking so hard?" Morgan asked softly from behind him; Reid gave a ghost of a chuckle.

They were lying in the bed of the spare bedroom in Morgan's mama's house, celebrating another Thanksgiving come and gone. He'd thought Morgan was asleep behind him, right up until the point he'd spoken; he should've known Derek would know he wasn't sleeping either.

"Why are you still awake? You should be exhausted by now. Logically," he added teasingly.

Derek snorted quietly, the sound full of amusement. "Please. You think a couple games of football with a bunch of teenagers is enough to tire me out?"

Reid smiled as he remembered the picture of Derek fast asleep after dinner on the recliner in the living room; he'd looked completely relaxed and was stretched out fit to fall out of the chair entirely. "Well, you did take that nice long nap," Reid reminded him.

"What's that hormone you get from eating turkey that makes you sleepy? Melanin?" Derek replied.

Reid laughed silently. "Melatonin," he corrected, "but you were very close."

"Damn," Derek muttered, running his nose over the back of Reid's neck, making the other profiler shiver. "Either way, it was the turkey, not because I was tired. And you didn't answer the question."

Reid sighed, a thing Morgan more felt than heard with his arms around Reid's waist. Reid's cool hands pushed gently at his arms and Morgan relaxed his hold, scooting back in the bed to allow Reid to turn over and face him. For all that he'd been laughing just a second ago, he face was very serious now.

"I was thinking about what happened this time last year," Reid murmured, barely able to see Derek in the darkness. The room was lit only by a ray of moonlight making its way in through the curtains closed across the window, shedding pale light around the room; the deepest corners like where Derek now lay remained untouched, full of darkness and secrets like the one they now discussed.

That light was their compromise to Morgan's inability to sleep with a light on and Reid's trouble sleeping in total darkness. Now, though, Reid didn't really need to see to know what Morgan's reaction would be; his handsome face would be twisted at the memory and Reid wished that he'd held his silence, that he could take it back before this led to a place neither of them wanted to revisit.

"Jesus, Reid, what a thing to bring up," Morgan said disgustedly. He shifted and Reid retracted his hands, folding in on himself until he was in as much of a ball as he could be given the lack of space in the bed.

"Sorry," he whispered, staring down at the sheets, "I know it's really bad timing, being Thanksgiving and all. Just forget I said it, okay?"

A breath of silence hung in the air as Reid stayed very still and very small, waiting for Derek to make the first move; he'd pushed the last time, and it had turned out so badly…

"God, Spence, please don't do that!" Morgan begged, warm hands tilting Reid's face up to meet his. It was nothing more than a light brush of lips, much gentler than other times, but it left Reid tingling all over. Morgan's hands were still cupping the sides of his face when he began speaking again.

"Please, please don't look like that; you don't know how much I hate it when you look ready to cry at the next thing I say. Don't be afraid of me. I swear on everything I hold dear that I will never, ever, hurt you again like I did last time."

With things so tenuously balanced, Reid couldn't voice his doubts but it didn't matter; Morgan seemed to know them anyway.

"I know you doubt my word, Spence, and you have good reason to; after everything I put you through last year, all the empty promises I made, the trust I broke, I count myself lucky that you still listen to me at all. I would give most anything to undo what happened. But if I have to keep saying this, keep proving this to you every day for the rest of my life to make you believe it, I will."

Derek's voice was warm and soft in the darkness, full of a confidence that was hard to doubt. "I promise you here, now, and forever, that I will not ever willingly hurt you like that again. Not physically, not mentally, not emotionally, not anywhere, I promise you. More than that, I promise I will protect you from everything I possibly can; I won't ever leave you, not so long as I have any say in the matter."

Reid took note of the wording even as he slowly nodded his acceptance, beginning, finally, to believe what the other man had been working so hard to tell him all this time.

Through the terrible months after the disaster when Reid went between not caring who he was and lashing out at Morgan whenever he came near…

Through the whole team trying to work around the other agent without acknowledging he existed…

Through the dark loneliness of those nights when Reid had to resort to nightlights in every room in his apartment because the darkness was too much without the other profiler's protective hold…

Through living at JJ's when even that failed to make things better again…

After Hotch telling them both they needed to get help…

After Emily's tentative peace offering between Morgan and herself, the first of the team to forgive Morgan for what he'd done, or rather, what he hadn't…

On the day Reid finally broke and admitted to himself that he needed Morgan, that he understood what he'd been trying to do, finally understanding the darkness in both of them…

Despite the hostility, anger, and rejection, every day, somehow, Morgan had tried to apologize, not always only in words but also in the little things he did to try to make it up to the other man. Getting coffee, running errands, holding doors, anything that got him close to Reid, to try and make him see how sorry he was. It didn't seem to make a difference.

Morgan had apologized until he could no longer forget what he was apologizing for, until it haunted him everywhere. Months had passed before Reid willingly talked to Morgan outside of work, every day a long torture for them both; nearly a year went by before he started letting Morgan try to piece together the life he had shattered that night.

The nightmares Reid had wished upon him had started that very night he returned home; plagued by a never-ending regret and guilt for what he'd done and all he'd lost, it became obvious to everyone who saw him that something was wrong.

At the same time, Reid was lashing out in all directions, driving everyone away from himself in fits of temper and unpredictable depression that left JJ and Gideon floundering while trying to figure out how to care for the young genius.

They'd tolerated it for as best as they could, as long as they could. They still did their jobs and did them well but it felt like the family was breaking; what had made them the best, that easy and trusting dynamic that had bound them together, was starting to disappear.

When the atmosphere in the BAU had reached a breaking point, when JJ was regularly only a step away from hysteria, Emily threatening to quit, Garcia retreating further and further into her cave, and Gideon ready to give up on Reid, Hotch had finally stepped in, seeing that the agents were not going to get help for themselves.

He'd known since nearly the beginning that Reid's rage and Morgan's avolition were products of them being separated, of the history they were trying to ignore. He'd waited for them to realize the same thing, waited entirely too long, perhaps, until his second family was at risk; he wondered if maybe he was already too late when he ordered them both to counseling. Together.

He nearly was. Reid had been so destroyed by his anger at Morgan that he'd nearly forgotten how to be anything else; it became instinctual, the reaction he went to first at the merest provocation. Without the team and without Reid to support him, Morgan was drowning in his grief and his guilt. No one had missed the irony; the two agents had now reversed roles, Reid in the extreme of Morgan's anger, Morgan taking on all Reid's vulnerability and hopelessness.

With the guidance of a doctor Hotch trusted personally and professionally, the two began to face all that they had buried and had started trying to restart their lives. Progress was painful, slow, and hard on all of them as they tried to recover from months of abuse, but it was there. There were times when the guilt came back, when someone thought again how stupid it was that they had missed this or done that, but now that the secret was no longer leaving wounds no one could see, they were healing. The family was coming together, healing together.

When Reid had tentatively suggested they try being a 'them' again, Morgan had hesitated. Reid, although upset by it, understood and gave him the space and the time to figure out his hesitation and his fears. This wasn't something either of them could rush; with all that had passed, they had to be certain they were willing to face each other, knowing that the truth that had almost shattered everything they held dear would always lie between them.

But Reid was willing to try; he'd wait for as long as it took.

The day that Morgan sought Reid out to ask him if they could have dinner marked the closing of the longest chapter of their lives, and the start of a new one.

Now when the nightmares threatened, the solace he found was in Reid's slender frame, Reid's firm hands on his shoulders, waking him and holding him steady as he tried to make sense of it all.

Now when he was terrified by the darkness of the night, he had Derek's arms to surround him and his voice to calm the fears as he tried to remember what was happening now and not back then.

In that heartbeat of time, lying in the bed of his adoptive mother's house, Reid remembered everything. All the things Morgan had tried to do, every apology, every cry of regret when he was trapped in his nightmares, and Reid finally understood.

The darkness wasn't absolute. It wasn't who Morgan was, who he was, who any of them were. It lived in them and occasionally controlled them, but it would never be all that they were, especially not if they stayed together, if they never abandoned each other to fight it alone. _United we stand, divided we fall, indeed… Or maybe, together we fall, and then we help each other stand again_, Reid thought.

Morgan couldn't absolutely promise him that he'd never hurt him or leave him again; the world they lived in and the work they did was just too uncertain. But he promised and meant what he'd just said, that if it was all up to him…

"Those months without you were hell on earth, Pretty Boy. I won't stand living through that a second time," Derek whispered in the darkness, breaking Reid from his thoughts and back to the present. "Please, don't make me."

True vulnerability, true intimacy, the thing that scared Morgan most.

"It's enough, Der; I never needed to hear you say it."

* * *

A/N: Thank you all for a great turnout with this story! I hope you enjoyed it, I loved writing it. I'm feeling rather sorry that this is the end, and I hope I haven't disappointed too much by doing this; I simply could not stand to drag this any longer!

As a side note you may find interesting, this is only how the original ending went. Thanks to the lovely lil'spencefan, my brain will now not stop giving me random plots about a possible Revelations segue (lol, sincerely, I do thank you!). So for that, it may become an alternate ending, another story entirely, or some sort of continuation from this as soon as I get something more definite to write on. Hope to see you there if it comes out!

~Shadow

PS: Happy New Year's Eve!


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